Star Trek Discovery, finally a trailer

[Olinser]

Well yeah I mean Kirk got his ship back too in the latest movie for pretty much no good reason too. Still its inconsistent. Frankly keeping Michael NOT a command officer would be a good change of pace from the usual way Star Trek tends to go.

If you're referring to Wrath of Kahn Remix there was a good reason for Kirk to get back his ship.

Namely, Admiral Marcus wanted to start a war with the Klingons, he needed a scapegoat, and Kirk fit the role perfectly. Remember Marcus had sabotaged his ship and expected the Klingons to destroy it after Kirk fired the torpedoes.

[SuperPanda]

If you're referring to Wrath of Kahn Remix there was a good reason for Kirk to get back his ship.

Namely, Admiral Marcus wanted to start a war with the Klingons, he needed a scapegoat, and Kirk fit the role perfectly. Remember Marcus had sabotaged his ship and expected the Klingons to destroy it after Kirk fired the torpedoes.

Looking at JJ films:
2009 - Kirk cheats on his exams, gets suspended pending judgement. Sneaks onto a starship. Gets commissioned and promoted to XO (apparently the only people with a rank above cadet were Pike and Spock), disobeys orders - gets marooned, boards the ship without permission, successfully mutinies, saves Earth ... is rewarded by skipping every rank between cadet and Captain (technically before he has even graduated).

Into Darkness - Ignores protocol (again - its heavily implied to be a chronic issue), gets demoted, gets promoted back to where he was (before any real time has passed) - is almost manipulated into starting a war - disobeys orders (multiple counts) - gets in a fight in earth orbit, gets his ship destroyed in such a way that it crashes into a major city - gets his ship rebuilt and keeps his rank and post.

Beyond - blows a diplomatic mission in part because he didn't know the species in question was small. Gets his ship destroyed. His crew rallies together to save the day - gets a brand new ship.

Beyond is really the best one in regards to Kirk getting a new ship (which is true for all of them so far) - it strains belief the least. Still, why does JJ-Starfleet (which only seems to have one Constituion class) keep giving it to someone who is objectively bad at their job?

Following protocol? - I can't think of a single example. This doesn't mean there isn't one, I just can't think of one.

Diplomacy? Well he didn't fire on the known Federation Fugative hiding in an explicitly not-populated part of a hostile alien species' honeworld - so I guess that's something.

Making plans? - his plan for rescuing the people in STID involved hiding the space ship in the ocean so that the Hunter-gatherer locals wouldn't see it...

Assessing risk? In 2009 he pretty much says "never tell me the odds" and trusts his supernatural levels of luck. In Into Darkness he never has time to - but he is shown trusting both Marcus and Khan but not Scotty. I get the emotions behind those choices, but that's 0 for 3 on knowing if the person talking to you has your interests in mind - then he gets into similar trust issues in Beyond showing he hasn't really learned much.

Leading his crew? He did well enough in 2009 to warrent a promotion strait to Lt (like prime Kirk got out of the Academy) - and a fast track to command (also prime). In STID, he lets hot-chick on with false papers and ignores questions on the matter. He ignores Scotty's concerns of the weapons. He puts his medical officer at risk of death when handing munitions (because Scotty refused the mission on moral grounds). He puts his helmsman in charge of the warp engine over all of his engineers qualified people - suggesting that he doesn't even know his crew outside of the bridge staff. Probably the only truely good leadership moment here was him making the smart call to sacrafice himself to save the ship because Spock is an objectively better leader...

Courage - I'm not sure how much of his behavior is courageous rather than reckless but he certainly ranks high in initiative.

Keep in mind that I legitimately like 2009 and Beyond. They are just heavily flawed.

Spoiler: Kirk or Lorca

Show

Doesn't follow orders he doesn't like.
Makes bold actions that keep getting results.
Developed a strong relationship with his not really Vulcan or human crewmembrt.
Hears the guy in charge of his propulsion system say "it can't be done" only to respond "make it happen"
Looks good with no shirt.
Creates headaches for his bosses but somehow escapes punishment most of the time.

Thing is, I'm sure no one would call Lorca a Gary Stu when Kirk (JJ verse) almost certainly is.

[Rogar Demonblud]

One nitpick: It was the Vengeance that crashed into the Academy, not the Enterprise. And I still haven't seen Beyond, so I can't comment on that. But I do agree with your assessment.

[SuperPanda]

You know - I forgot that. Thanks. I just remembered an Enterprise shape ship crash, Kirk basically trashing his ship in both sequels and getting a new one the same model.

[Darth Ultron]

I saw in the news that Star Trek:Discovery is the most prated show of all time, wonder if that is true?

Spoiler: S1E6 - Lethe

Show

Well, the Vulcan shuttle ship sure looked nice...it was like someone watched ENT established Trek cannon, saw what Vulcan ships looked like, and then made a ship in that style. Sigh, only if the rest of the show could do that....

The somewhat non humanoid Cancri were nice to see.

The end bit with Rebel Captain being all ''contact Starfleet for orders'' was nice.....

Things That Don't Make Sense

*The War. They keep, vaguely talking about the war, and more to the point that ''war is bad''. The problem is that they just vaguely talk about it. Now sure to show even ''one battle'' would cost 70 billion in special effects (but they have plenty for things like the dumb nebula), but they don't ''have'' to show a super special effects battle. They could just...tell us about the war. How is it going? What planets were attacked? Ships lost? People killed?

*Did I miss the big reason Sarek felt it needed to be all secret?

*Why does Sarek take just one guy on the ship? It is kind of a bad idea to head off into space with just one or two people. Sure, he did not want to bring like 25,000 people...but really taking a crew of like 12 or so would not be much of a stretch.

*Burnham and Tilly are running laps just through random hallways? Wonder why the ship does not have a 'rec hallway' somewhere...like one with little foot traffic? Like around just store rooms? But then you'd think the ship would have treadmills too? Or a 'holo tread track room', for that matter.

*Um, Disco shirts? Disco?

*I guess it is a preference thing...but the food slot computer is very annoying, and worse it sprouts 21st century food myths/disinformation.

*A holodeck? Sigh. Sure just re write everything, so why even call it Star Trek?

*Of course it has been a Trek thing forever...but..sigh...Sareks shuttle takes damage...and drifts into a 'nebula' where it is hard to get to and find. Sigh, so over done.

*And why does not Sarek's shuttle send out a beacon automatically when it takes damage? Really, this is 20th century tech here...

*And why does not Saek's ship have voice commands? Or the super smart A.I. computer?

*Starfleet sure seems like they don't even want to go look for Sarek. Odd. Even a hint that someone is missing and normal you mobile everything. The first 24 hours are important. Always. For there to be procedures/protocols is just silly.

*The katra telepathy now fills the universe? Sigh. Maybe it is the soul of the fungus....

*And, like last time it's amazing telepathy can work over hundreds of light years or so...

*So Discovery can't go into the radioactive nebula because it will make the fungus spores explode? What?

*Stamets seems a bit happy in this episode, is he high on 'shrooms? (or a mirror duplicate?)

*Odd the radioactive nebula is no threat to Sarek or the shuttle.

*Guess it is amazing Ash is a qualified chief of security and a great pilot too.

*So Burnham uses a Borg Synaptic Relay to boost her telepathic contact....oh, wait, it is a prequel so it is just ''mind tech'' the Federation has for no reason...

*Vice Admiral Cornwell sure just comes out of nowhere to visit Discovery.

*As the show mentions...why would not captain Lorca need some 'downtime' after being captured. Ash too? Would it not be normal to send them to the New Zealand Center for Space Trama or something.....

*Amanda Grayson sure is young and pretty...but Sarek is older, right? This is the odd thing about ''Vulcan's live to be 200'', that they should not ''look'' and ''act'' like humans of the same age do. Really for a Vulcan there life's should be ''twice as long'' so like a human develops from a baby to adult in 20 years, it would take 40 for a Vulcan. The idea that both races are both 20, or any other age at the same time is silly. And, of course, it is not true as they get older. A 80 year old human is not anything like an 80 year old Vulcan, as vulcans don't go through 120 years of being a senior citizen, right?

*So the High Vulcan Guy acts like humans and vulcans don't mix....but that does seem kind of odd. It has been 200 years from First Contact. That is a long time. And the two races do get along fairly well....so it does not seem like there would be a problem.

*So when he wakes up Sarek does the old ''hit a random spot on the control panel'', but good thing he sent out the SOS with that.

*So in Sick Bay...why oh why do we only see Junior Doctor guy? Really is the Chief Medical Officer just too busy or something? Any other trek show has them run in for even a paper cut.

*So captain Lorca is very diffrent from just before he lost his ship and crew in a ion storm....hummm, and ion storm that broke into the Mirror Universe maybe?

*Of course when Vice Admiral Cornwell tells a star of the show ''you will be removed'', you know she is a dead woman...lol

*Oh, the Klingons talk of peace was a trap...wow, shocking. Wonder why Starfleet did not figure that one out?

*Guess it would have made too much sense to have a ''no weapons'' rule at the meeting?

*And why not do the big peace talk meeting by hologram?

*Guess Vice Admiral Cornwell was too shocked to say ''beam me up'' ? But I'm sure she has one of them under the skin communicators (they HAD them in Classic Trek).

Final- C, The show is explicitly drawing on Trek lore to achieve its goals, and yet every nod to the original series (Burnham even mentioned the Enterprise) just underlines how un-Star Trek this show really is. The constant awareness of where these stories fit in the franchise timeline makes it impossible to judge DSC on its own terms. I can’t appreciate what it does right because I’m routinely distracted by the weird, pointless, or outright bad choices the writers have made. We’re six episodes in, and I’m still getting annoyed at how advanced the technology is for a series that’s ostensibly set ten years before the original Trek

[JadedDM]

Umm...'Disco' is short for Discovery. You know. The name of the ship?

[comicshorse]

I saw in the news that Star Trek:Discovery is the most prated show of all time, wonder if that is true?

Prated ???????

[Darth Ultron]

Umm...'Disco' is short for Discovery. You know. The name of the ship?

Yea, sure it is. Guess the T-shirt maker machine ran out of letters?

So on the Enterprise they would wear Enter shirts, right?

Defiant would be Def, Voyager would be Voy, and so on....

[Olinser]

Prated ???????

I assume he means 'pirated'. Which is accurate, and was 100% forseeable, that when you lock a show behind a ridiculously overpriced paywall, people are going to pirate it.

[comicshorse]

Ah that would make sense. Thanks

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I assume he means 'pirated'. Which is accurate, and was 100% forseeable, that when you lock a show behind a ridiculously overpriced paywall, people are going to pirate it.

But more than say Game of Thrones? Despite being available on Netflix in many if not most places outside the US?

That's pretty big. The show is in at least one way a success then.

Spoiler: Ash

Show

I don't really care if the rumors will turn out to be true, but until they're disproved I'm definitely viewing the show as if he is a Klingon augment, either a deep cover spy or some sort of renegade. The beard is a nice touch, good throwback to TOS Klingons. Although the whole augment thing as an ENT explanation for the two different TOS Klingon styles does become more confusing by the Klingon's redesign. So Worf retroactively looked like a lizard, but the TOS tv Klingons actually did look like bearded humans rather than retroactively looking like the redesign as well because in the mean time they were retroactively established by ENT to look different from the TOS movie/TNG Klingons? That's the version we're going with now?

[Yora]

That story seems to be from last month for the first two episodes. And it said it's currently second after Game of Thrones.
No clue what the situation is now.

[ImperiousLeader]

I believe it, I haven't heard many good things about the CBS app. I'm just kinda glad to have it on cable here in Canada, it's been doing very well on Space.

Spoiler: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Show

I continue to be impressed with Discovery. This was probably the most ... classic of Trek episodes, the Groundhog Day time loop. And yet, some neat twists. We didn't spend time figuring out what was happening, we just had Stamets already knowing and working through options off camera. Changing the focus was really cool.

The montage of Lorca deaths was both gruesome and yet kinda funny. Very dark humour.

Although I am definitely a believer in the Ash is Voq theory, I kinda hope it isn't true. 'Cause I like Ash and Michael, they have nice chemistry. And Ash is pretty.

Finally, I did like the party. If for no other reason than it was just more energetic than any party you'd see in the other serieses. Beer pong on Picard's Enterprise? The mind rebels.

[Chen]

I saw in the news that Star Trek:Discovery is the most prated show of all time, wonder if that is true?

Spoiler: S1E6 - Lethe

Show

Well, the Vulcan shuttle ship sure looked nice...it was like someone watched ENT established Trek cannon, saw what Vulcan ships looked like, and then made a ship in that style. Sigh, only if the rest of the show could do that....

The somewhat non humanoid Cancri were nice to see.

The end bit with Rebel Captain being all ''contact Starfleet for orders'' was nice.....

Things That Don't Make Sense

*The War. They keep, vaguely talking about the war, and more to the point that ''war is bad''. The problem is that they just vaguely talk about it. Now sure to show even ''one battle'' would cost 70 billion in special effects (but they have plenty for things like the dumb nebula), but they don't ''have'' to show a super special effects battle. They could just...tell us about the war. How is it going? What planets were attacked? Ships lost? People killed?

*Did I miss the big reason Sarek felt it needed to be all secret?

*Why does Sarek take just one guy on the ship? It is kind of a bad idea to head off into space with just one or two people. Sure, he did not want to bring like 25,000 people...but really taking a crew of like 12 or so would not be much of a stretch.

*Burnham and Tilly are running laps just through random hallways? Wonder why the ship does not have a 'rec hallway' somewhere...like one with little foot traffic? Like around just store rooms? But then you'd think the ship would have treadmills too? Or a 'holo tread track room', for that matter.

*Um, Disco shirts? Disco?

*I guess it is a preference thing...but the food slot computer is very annoying, and worse it sprouts 21st century food myths/disinformation.

*A holodeck? Sigh. Sure just re write everything, so why even call it Star Trek?

*Of course it has been a Trek thing forever...but..sigh...Sareks shuttle takes damage...and drifts into a 'nebula' where it is hard to get to and find. Sigh, so over done.

*And why does not Sarek's shuttle send out a beacon automatically when it takes damage? Really, this is 20th century tech here...

*And why does not Saek's ship have voice commands? Or the super smart A.I. computer?

*Starfleet sure seems like they don't even want to go look for Sarek. Odd. Even a hint that someone is missing and normal you mobile everything. The first 24 hours are important. Always. For there to be procedures/protocols is just silly.

*The katra telepathy now fills the universe? Sigh. Maybe it is the soul of the fungus....

*And, like last time it's amazing telepathy can work over hundreds of light years or so...

*So Discovery can't go into the radioactive nebula because it will make the fungus spores explode? What?

*Stamets seems a bit happy in this episode, is he high on 'shrooms? (or a mirror duplicate?)

*Odd the radioactive nebula is no threat to Sarek or the shuttle.

*Guess it is amazing Ash is a qualified chief of security and a great pilot too.

*So Burnham uses a Borg Synaptic Relay to boost her telepathic contact....oh, wait, it is a prequel so it is just ''mind tech'' the Federation has for no reason...

*Vice Admiral Cornwell sure just comes out of nowhere to visit Discovery.

*As the show mentions...why would not captain Lorca need some 'downtime' after being captured. Ash too? Would it not be normal to send them to the New Zealand Center for Space Trama or something.....

*Amanda Grayson sure is young and pretty...but Sarek is older, right? This is the odd thing about ''Vulcan's live to be 200'', that they should not ''look'' and ''act'' like humans of the same age do. Really for a Vulcan there life's should be ''twice as long'' so like a human develops from a baby to adult in 20 years, it would take 40 for a Vulcan. The idea that both races are both 20, or any other age at the same time is silly. And, of course, it is not true as they get older. A 80 year old human is not anything like an 80 year old Vulcan, as vulcans don't go through 120 years of being a senior citizen, right?

*So the High Vulcan Guy acts like humans and vulcans don't mix....but that does seem kind of odd. It has been 200 years from First Contact. That is a long time. And the two races do get along fairly well....so it does not seem like there would be a problem.

*So when he wakes up Sarek does the old ''hit a random spot on the control panel'', but good thing he sent out the SOS with that.

*So in Sick Bay...why oh why do we only see Junior Doctor guy? Really is the Chief Medical Officer just too busy or something? Any other trek show has them run in for even a paper cut.

*So captain Lorca is very diffrent from just before he lost his ship and crew in a ion storm....hummm, and ion storm that broke into the Mirror Universe maybe?

*Of course when Vice Admiral Cornwell tells a star of the show ''you will be removed'', you know she is a dead woman...lol

*Oh, the Klingons talk of peace was a trap...wow, shocking. Wonder why Starfleet did not figure that one out?

*Guess it would have made too much sense to have a ''no weapons'' rule at the meeting?

*And why not do the big peace talk meeting by hologram?

*Guess Vice Admiral Cornwell was too shocked to say ''beam me up'' ? But I'm sure she has one of them under the skin communicators (they HAD them in Classic Trek).

Final- C, The show is explicitly drawing on Trek lore to achieve its goals, and yet every nod to the original series (Burnham even mentioned the Enterprise) just underlines how un-Star Trek this show really is. The constant awareness of where these stories fit in the franchise timeline makes it impossible to judge DSC on its own terms. I can’t appreciate what it does right because I’m routinely distracted by the weird, pointless, or outright bad choices the writers have made. We’re six episodes in, and I’m still getting annoyed at how advanced the technology is for a series that’s ostensibly set ten years before the original Trek

Out of all the things you mentioned only the holodeck is "advanced" compared to TOS (from this episode), and even they had holographic rec rooms back then. Everything else is the same fridge logic that comes with most sci fi (including pretty much any previous Star Treks).

[SuperPanda]

Spoiler: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Show

I'm going to share post episode thoughts - and I certainly loved it. Its a wonderful bubble episode and a fun time-loop episode in the vein of Cause and Effect. Mudd is still amazing. I loved every minute of it.

Starting off with the Party - Overall I thought it was nice. I'd seen complaints that the mess hall didn't have windows elsewhere and this episode I noticed that it does in fact have some - making it a bit more like the NX-01's mess hall overall.

Tyler's speech about 10,000 makes it sound like that's the total number that has been lost full scale war with the Klingons. Even assuming that's only Starfleet personnel and not any civilians, that's really low. Previously they stated more than 8,000 died in the opening day of the war (Trailers said "since the war began" but the actual episode say "that day" meaning in the battle of the binary stars). This is likely an issue of "writers having no sense of scale" - I choose to reconcile this to 10,000 this day/week/month. Michael's log states that starfleet is winning and we've yet to see cloaking devices in play, so its possible, even likely that there has been skirmishing near the boarder but the real war hasn't started yet. The Klingon in-fighting seems to be wrapping up, it is possible that General Kol hasn't lead his first battle yet.

I'm less convinced Tyler is a Klingon - with each episode they make me want it to be true less. If they really are going to go there I want them to establish the pieces early - the mind ripper, the augmentation - have Tyler out a different Klingon spy to keep himself above suspicion.

Tilly has either gotten over her Barclay like issues in the month+ she's been with Michael or she was wasted at that party but able to sober up pretty quickly during the timeloops. I put my money on buzzed at the party and hanging with Michael has loosened her up from a combination of increased confidence and realizing that others are just as/more messed up than herself. Her attempts to play matchmaker are hilarious.

Trippy Stamets is very very fun, especially with how much of a jerk he was back in episode 3. I'm unsure how I feel about the cybernetic implants he has. On the one side, Federation technology is shown as being pretty good at cybernetics in TNG between the Visor and Picard's heart;
On the other hand the skin flush implants just felt off to me.

The Lorca death montage was almost as funny as how clearly annoyed Lorca was at having to detour from his war to play zookeeper for a spacewhale. His "I don't give a damn" comments were hilarious.

I loved this.

I saw an interesting review of Discovery episode 1 and 2 on youtube - I think Trekspertise but I'm not sure. The part of it which I want to talk about is the use of Dutch Angles - when the camera is slanted so that it looks like room is tipping and the people are about to fall over. Like the reviewer I'd been thinking that this was just a "look cool and space-like" choice. The reviewer however noted that this only happened on the starfleet side of things in the first two episodes. Specifically it happened when the starfleet characters were indecisive or off-balance. When they didn't know what to do or were in conflict about what actions to take.

My wife finally got to watch "Lethe" today (we watched 6 and 7 back to back just now). I caught something interesting with that last scene:

Spoiler: Lethe end-scene (Some notes from today's episode too)

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Once Saru leaves and Lorca is alone the camera switches to and stays at a dutch angle. On top of that we get Lorca reflected in the window.
In alot of cinema, reflected images are used to signal internal conflict. So I'm now even more sure that Lorca was off-balance and conflicted at the end of Lethe. This makes me a little bit sad that "Magic to Make the Sanest Mad Go Mad" was the follow-up episode. I wanted to see Lorca struggle a bit more with this.

Still, Cornwall was in the preview for the next episode so I might just get my wish. I'm pretty sure that Lethe was suppose to set us up to enjoy the Lorca death montage. I'm still expecting the "Reveal" for Lorca to be that Cornwall was right and he is a badly damaged man. I'm still expecting a heroic sacrifice and hoping for his crew to save him from himself.

Not too much to talk about. Today's episode was pretty light on the whole. It was fun, cute, and beautifully campy.

Spoiler: Quick style notes

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Stella and her Dad's clothes and ship felt like they were updated TOS aesthetics. I'd read that (Wanna Say Brian Fuller) who originally pitched Discovery and pushed hard for the new Klingon design got into a number of disputes with the rest of the creative team and that his influence slowly fades over season 1 - I'm wondering now if A) this is why I seem to like each episode more than the last and B) why they were able to get Stella and company's style so very 60s while still feeling like they belong on TV in 2017.

I mean, overall I'm loving the show. I have no problem with the visual reboot elements of the show though I still prefer the TMP-ENT era Klingon design (Honestly - just give them hair and they're fine as they are...) I like the TMP feeling interriors and such. Within the full scope of Trek Canon, TOS is the odd-duck out on ship interiors. Knowing that Gene Roddenberry wanted fans to just pretend TOS looked like TMP is good enough for me but I know a lot of others would prefer a move towards TOS aesthetics. I like most of DSC, I like the uniforms and the delta-badge's - but I'd be up for seeing steps towards the Red Jacket or color'd uniforms. Really I just want them to turn up the lights a bit so we can see the ship better (I know Lorca's eyes are the in universe reason when we don't).

Finally

Spoiler: Preview for Next week

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I'm very much looking forward to seeing new ships, and finally a planet to explore. Today was a plot-light very fun adventure. Next week looks like the plot gets back to full gear!

[Chen]

Some thoughts on the last episode.

Spoiler

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Had a problem with the way they did the last trick for Mudd. They had only one attempt to do that and they somehow managed to get everyone in on it. Burnham also had to tell Stamets she was planning on killing herself since he wasn't actually around when she did it, and clearly she wouldn't remember once it looped. Since Mudd knew everything at that point its seems unreasonable that they managed to get everyone on board with the "trick" in just 30 min, especially people they didn't have "practice" with like the Captain or Saru. If they had multiple cycles to "try things out" fine, but we knew there was just 1 attempt at that last one.

The ~300 year old music at the party was off too. That's way more than just "oldies".

Otherwise, the episode was pretty good.

[JadedDM]

Actually, I think that was the most recent music I've ever heard in Star Trek. In TNG, everyone just listens to classical music--stuff that is hundreds of years old even by today's standards. In DS9, they mostly listened to decades old jazz. Apparently no new music has been invented since warp drive was invented.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Spoiler: Ash

Show

I don't really care if the rumors will turn out to be true, but until they're disproved I'm definitely viewing the show as if he is a Klingon augment, either a deep cover spy or some sort of renegade. The beard is a nice touch, good throwback to TOS Klingons. Although the whole augment thing as an ENT explanation for the two different TOS Klingon styles does become more confusing by the Klingon's redesign. So Worf retroactively looked like a lizard, but the TOS tv Klingons actually did look like bearded humans rather than retroactively looking like the redesign as well because in the mean time they were retroactively established by ENT to look different from the TOS movie/TNG Klingons? That's the version we're going with now?

Spoiler: Ketchum

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Okay, this episode does put some strain on the theory. Is het that perfectionist a traitor that he'd stop this just because the ship would end up in the hands of the wrong Klingons? So, rogue renegade rebel Klingon it is.

[Legato Endless]

Spoiler: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

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Tyler's speech about 10,000 makes it sound like that's the total number that has been lost full scale war with the Klingons. Even assuming that's only Starfleet personnel and not any civilians, that's really low. Previously they stated more than 8,000 died in the opening day of the war (Trailers said "since the war began" but the actual episode say "that day" meaning in the battle of the binary stars). This is likely an issue of "writers having no sense of scale" - I choose to reconcile this to 10,000 this day/week/month. Michael's log states that starfleet is winning and we've yet to see cloaking devices in play, so its possible, even likely that there has been skirmishing near the boarder but the real war hasn't started yet. The Klingon in-fighting seems to be wrapping up, it is possible that General Kol hasn't lead his first battle yet.

I took 10,000 to be more a biblical understatement, that number being a common poetic signifier of 'countless' or a vast number which everyone understands in its fuzzy enormity but certainly not a technical count. Especially because citing an estimated death count in the middle of a war is going to an exercise in futility anyway. The number could change from hour to hour, and for a toast in a party, giving something poetic that communicates the point is going to be more glibly effective.

Some thoughts on the last episode.

Spoiler

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Had a problem with the way they did the last trick for Mudd. They had only one attempt to do that and they somehow managed to get everyone in on it. Burnham also had to tell Stamets she was planning on killing herself since he wasn't actually around when she did it, and clearly she wouldn't remember once it looped. Since Mudd knew everything at that point its seems unreasonable that they managed to get everyone on board with the "trick" in just 30 min, especially people they didn't have "practice" with like the Captain or Saru. If they had multiple cycles to "try things out" fine, but we knew there was just 1 attempt at that last one.

Otherwise, the episode was pretty good.

Spoiler: Perception Check?

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Along a similar note, I'm a little puzzled how Mudd was able to obsessively memorize the layout of the ship and the crew but he doesn't really seem to grok the significance of finding Michael and Stametz and the like in different places in later iterations. You'd think he'd be a little more paranoid about the potential implications there but I guess he just didn't care? Maybe he was so tired of the iterations he'd gotten sloppy?

[Olinser]

Spoiler: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Show

I'm going to share post episode thoughts - and I certainly loved it. Its a wonderful bubble episode and a fun time-loop episode in the vein of Cause and Effect. Mudd is still amazing. I loved every minute of it.

Starting off with the Party - Overall I thought it was nice. I'd seen complaints that the mess hall didn't have windows elsewhere and this episode I noticed that it does in fact have some - making it a bit more like the NX-01's mess hall overall.

Tyler's speech about 10,000 makes it sound like that's the total number that has been lost full scale war with the Klingons. Even assuming that's only Starfleet personnel and not any civilians, that's really low. Previously they stated more than 8,000 died in the opening day of the war (Trailers said "since the war began" but the actual episode say "that day" meaning in the battle of the binary stars). This is likely an issue of "writers having no sense of scale" - I choose to reconcile this to 10,000 this day/week/month. Michael's log states that starfleet is winning and we've yet to see cloaking devices in play, so its possible, even likely that there has been skirmishing near the boarder but the real war hasn't started yet. The Klingon in-fighting seems to be wrapping up, it is possible that General Kol hasn't lead his first battle yet.

I'm less convinced Tyler is a Klingon - with each episode they make me want it to be true less. If they really are going to go there I want them to establish the pieces early - the mind ripper, the augmentation - have Tyler out a different Klingon spy to keep himself above suspicion.

Tilly has either gotten over her Barclay like issues in the month+ she's been with Michael or she was wasted at that party but able to sober up pretty quickly during the timeloops. I put my money on buzzed at the party and hanging with Michael has loosened her up from a combination of increased confidence and realizing that others are just as/more messed up than herself. Her attempts to play matchmaker are hilarious.

Trippy Stamets is very very fun, especially with how much of a jerk he was back in episode 3. I'm unsure how I feel about the cybernetic implants he has. On the one side, Federation technology is shown as being pretty good at cybernetics in TNG between the Visor and Picard's heart;
On the other hand the skin flush implants just felt off to me.

The Lorca death montage was almost as funny as how clearly annoyed Lorca was at having to detour from his war to play zookeeper for a spacewhale. His "I don't give a damn" comments were hilarious.

I loved this.

I saw an interesting review of Discovery episode 1 and 2 on youtube - I think Trekspertise but I'm not sure. The part of it which I want to talk about is the use of Dutch Angles - when the camera is slanted so that it looks like room is tipping and the people are about to fall over. Like the reviewer I'd been thinking that this was just a "look cool and space-like" choice. The reviewer however noted that this only happened on the starfleet side of things in the first two episodes. Specifically it happened when the starfleet characters were indecisive or off-balance. When they didn't know what to do or were in conflict about what actions to take.

My wife finally got to watch "Lethe" today (we watched 6 and 7 back to back just now). I caught something interesting with that last scene:

Spoiler: Lethe end-scene (Some notes from today's episode too)

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Once Saru leaves and Lorca is alone the camera switches to and stays at a dutch angle. On top of that we get Lorca reflected in the window.
In alot of cinema, reflected images are used to signal internal conflict. So I'm now even more sure that Lorca was off-balance and conflicted at the end of Lethe. This makes me a little bit sad that "Magic to Make the Sanest Mad Go Mad" was the follow-up episode. I wanted to see Lorca struggle a bit more with this.

Still, Cornwall was in the preview for the next episode so I might just get my wish. I'm pretty sure that Lethe was suppose to set us up to enjoy the Lorca death montage. I'm still expecting the "Reveal" for Lorca to be that Cornwall was right and he is a badly damaged man. I'm still expecting a heroic sacrifice and hoping for his crew to save him from himself.

Not too much to talk about. Today's episode was pretty light on the whole. It was fun, cute, and beautifully campy.

Spoiler: Quick style notes

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Stella and her Dad's clothes and ship felt like they were updated TOS aesthetics. I'd read that (Wanna Say Brian Fuller) who originally pitched Discovery and pushed hard for the new Klingon design got into a number of disputes with the rest of the creative team and that his influence slowly fades over season 1 - I'm wondering now if A) this is why I seem to like each episode more than the last and B) why they were able to get Stella and company's style so very 60s while still feeling like they belong on TV in 2017.

I mean, overall I'm loving the show. I have no problem with the visual reboot elements of the show though I still prefer the TMP-ENT era Klingon design (Honestly - just give them hair and they're fine as they are...) I like the TMP feeling interriors and such. Within the full scope of Trek Canon, TOS is the odd-duck out on ship interiors. Knowing that Gene Roddenberry wanted fans to just pretend TOS looked like TMP is good enough for me but I know a lot of others would prefer a move towards TOS aesthetics. I like most of DSC, I like the uniforms and the delta-badge's - but I'd be up for seeing steps towards the Red Jacket or color'd uniforms. Really I just want them to turn up the lights a bit so we can see the ship better (I know Lorca's eyes are the in universe reason when we don't).

Finally

Spoiler: Preview for Next week

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I'm very much looking forward to seeing new ships, and finally a planet to explore. Today was a plot-light very fun adventure. Next week looks like the plot gets back to full gear!

Star Trek in general has usually been pretty poor at actually keeping consistent the number of ships and personnel IN Starfleet, and the number of casualties that they suffered in 'big' conflicts (ESPECIALLY ground conflicts).

In TOS Kirk at one point claimed there were 12 Constitution-class starships in the fleet - and acted like that was a big number, but that doesn't jive with other people comments about the size of Starfleet and the area of space they control.

But then TNG, for instance, had Wolf 359 as a huge disaster for Starfleet - but they only actually lost 39 ships and about 11,000 people and that was supposed to be a huge disaster for Starfleet.

But then just a few in-universe years later both the Klingons and Starfleet are fielding fleets of HUNDREDS of ships at Deep Space Nine.

Relative to the size of ships in TOS, 10,000 is a decent number - the crew of a Constitution class is supposed to have somewhere around 200-400 people, and most other ships were smaller, so losing 10,000 purely from Naval conflicts would mean losing 25-50 ships, which would be a pretty big deal.

Ground conflict 10,000 is just a laughable number that's not even enough to defend a major city, much less a whole planet.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Star Trek in general has usually been pretty poor at actually keeping consistent the number of ships and personnel IN Starfleet, and the number of casualties that they suffered in 'big' conflicts (ESPECIALLY ground conflicts).

But then TNG, for instance, had Wolf 359 as a huge disaster for Starfleet - but they only actually lost 39 ships and about 11,000 people and that was supposed to be a huge disaster for Starfleet.

But then just a few in-universe years later both the Klingons and Starfleet are fielding fleets of HUNDREDS of ships at Deep Space Nine.

That one was apparently the fault of people doing research. When making the movie First Contact* the Star Trek people had made their own estimate of what a large number of Federation starships looked like. When the Dominion arc in Deep Space 9 started heating up they got in some outside experts** to look at how many ships an organization like Starfleet would realistically have/need given their rough size and number of planets and such, and they were surprised by how high the numbers were***. So now the semi-official explanation for First Contact is that Starfleet was surprised and the battle was fought only by Earths private defense forces, i.e. whatever ships happened to be around.

*Coincidentally the best Trek movie, suck it Wrath of Khan, 2009 and Galaxy Quest.
**Who do you even call for that? Navy experts? Logistics experts? A creative writing club for NASA employees?
***Because as tvtropes would put it scifi writer have no sense of scale.

Some thoughts on the last episode.

Spoiler

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Had a problem with the way they did the last trick for Mudd. They had only one attempt to do that and they somehow managed to get everyone in on it. Burnham also had to tell Stamets she was planning on killing herself since he wasn't actually around when she did it, and clearly she wouldn't remember once it looped. Since Mudd knew everything at that point its seems unreasonable that they managed to get everyone on board with the "trick" in just 30 min, especially people they didn't have "practice" with like the Captain or Saru. If they had multiple cycles to "try things out" fine, but we knew there was just 1 attempt at that last one.

Spoiler: Getting loopy

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Yeah, also, with nobody interfering with his work, how did Mudd actually set a much slower time to the moment where he calls the Klingons than in the round before?

[Mando Knight]

**Who do you even call for that? Navy experts? Logistics experts?

Naval logistics experts would be a good starting point. A starship conceptually projects power in a similar fashion to their water-bound equivalents, just on a grander scale.

Exactly how many the Federation needs would depend on how extensive offworld colonies are (to borrow Civilization terminology, if the Federation builds its colonies "wide", with many planets hosting a single small colony each--the most likely choice given most colonies shown in the series--or "tall", with a smaller number of highly-populated colonies that rival their homeworlds), how expensive starships are to produce (and don't give me the "we don't have money in the future" argument: if you need 15 megatons of dilithium to construct a hundred ships, ignoring the monetary value won't help you build your fleet with only half a kiloton), and how much relative power they project (in both firepower and the ability to get the firepower where it's needed).

Given the canon, the writers likely thought a few hundred vessels was excessive, but even a very lean fleet would require hundreds of ships just for self defense, let alone for logistics and exploration. If we assume that 10% of the worlds in the Federation are Earth-like homeworlds and the rest are single-city-ish colony worlds, that Starfleet uses 20% of its vessels for purposes other than patrol and defense, take an exact count of 150 member worlds (Picard says there are more than that as of First Contact, but we'll start here), and then estimate one patrol ship for every 5 colonies and 20 for each homeworld, you'd have a Starfleet of 400 ships. If the "member worlds" are just the homeworlds and the colonies are affiliates (with similar proportions), then the number of ships needed just for defense climbs to the thousands... and Starfleet's presence would still be very sparse overall.

To put it bluntly, a sci-fi writer's sense of scale would tell you that a real-life tardigrade and Discovery's "Ripper" are pretty much the same size.

[Darth Ultron]

Spoiler: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

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The Party-This is the perfect example of what is wrong with this show. They have a party on the Discovery..and is it a typical mature adult party with drinks and conversation? Nope. It is your typical stupid idiotic cool collage kidz party, Woo hoo! So just who are they trying to appeal the show too? The Cool Hipster Party Crowd is never going to watch Star Trek..

Harry Mudd- Well, we knew he would be back...sigh. And they turn the lovable scoundrel Harry Mudd from the Original Series into an all powerful insane bloodthirsty murderhobo. You know, to make him cool. He goes from Silly Con Man...to being the Joker. And look sure they want to take stuff from the Original Series to hide how bad the show is...but why even take Mudd if your just going to change up the character into an evil murderhobo monster? Why not just make a new character for this..or even just use Harry's brother, father or uncle?

Did you catch the goofy Andorian space suit Mudd was wearing...lol.

Wow, Dark Matter Grenades are cool....wounder why we don't see more cool weapons like that in Star Trek?

Things That Don't Make Sense

*Um, so the USS Discovery is now the most awesome and all powerful ship in the universe and is turning the tide of the war? To bad they can't show us any of that.

*And exactly how much can one dinky little science ship really do in a war anyway?

*So Specialist Michael Burnham is acting all like a Fish out of Water...but....she had a human step mom, Amanda Grayson, so is there some reason her step mom did not tell her about the Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees and the Moon up above and that thing called Love?

*And more so, Specialist Michael Burnham has been among humans for many years, so how can she have never been to a party or had any contact with people at all? Sure, she (aka the writer) makes some stupid comment that she was of a higher rank, but she was not born with that rank. She moved up the ranks like any other member of the crew....so, again, how did she not have any social contact?

*So Lieutenant Paul Stamets is all ''different'' after the spore stuff, but everyone is just like ''oh whatever''?

*Burnham and Ash sure chit chat a lot, like a stupid WB show, in the hallway when they should say ''sorry, can't talk we are on our way to the bridge".

*The Gormagander, is just another perfect example that this show was written by a person who has never watched Star Trek, or simply ''hates that stupid Trek show''. In Star Trek, space whales are not a common thing, unlike lots of other coolz sci-fi. The couple times we have seen such creatures it has always been an amazing thing. But, of course, for Discovery it is just ''oh, yea, a coolz space whale, that is so yesterday, whatever'. Sigh.

*Um, the Gormagander Doom Rule is about the dumbest rule in the universe. If a ship encounters one they must stop everything, capture it and take it to a sanctuary? And it is a Court Marshal Offense to not do so? And does the crew get keel hulled too?

*Um, as an arm chair xeno-biologist, would not beaming a space whale into a Earth normal gravity shuttle bay be harmful to it?

*So, for Harry's stupid plan to work...he had to find a lonely Gormagander and catch it or did he steal one from a sanctuary?

*Is there some reason the USS Discovery does not detect Mudds ''Jona'' shuttle?

*Even more so....to beam Harry and the ''Jona" shuttle on board the transporter does have to lock onto them with a transporter beam...right? That is how transporters work? So, how did they lock on to them, but not detect them?

*So the first time we see Mudd is his first time on the ship right? How does he take control of the computer in like ten seconds as he is walking about the ship slaughtering people like a murderhobo?

*So Mudd blows up the ship with some sort of Super Bomb? Like wow, is it powerfull...but where is it? It can't be on his Jona shuttle, right....because that is where the Time Crystal is...and he can't blow that up, right?

*Lieutenant Paul Stamets is, um, outside of time now? Because of the silly spores? So can the spores travel in space and time?

*So the second jump we see...is more like Mudds 30th jump, right? Even though, he beams out of his Jona shuttle and turns on the drive to blow up the ship in like two seconds....

*So Lieutenant Paul Stamets jumps like 50 times and proves that he is the most utterly useless waste of space of any Starfleet Officer ever.

*Why does not Lieutenant Paul Stamets, space idiot, go to the captain? Sure, he is the king of the idiots, but really ''ship in danger..tell captin'' is not a hard thought. And sure, the Captain will tell Paully that he is an idiot...but Paulyy can do that secret thing with the captain too...

*And everyone in Starfeelt knows Time Travel is possible....right? We see people in Trek time travel all the time.

*Everyone says the Time Loop is 30 minutes, but oddly it seems more like six minutes. The loop is party..talk for a couple minutes..Mudd and over.....really like six minutes. And if it is 30 minutes...why does Lieutenant Stamets, who is granted an idiot, not run to Burnam at the star of the loop...explain things to her and then have like 25 minutes to stop Mudd. Oddly we see...he s-l-o-w-l-y walks over to her, and talks for a couple minutes and then he is like ''oh no the loop is over!".....so was he doing uttely nothing and wating to go talk to Burnam when the clock got to like ''only three minutes until the loop resets again?"

*Mudd turns on the Self Destruct with a single voice command? Odd...every other Trek show has lots of code words for this and you need more then one command too.

*Is the sad, weepy WB unhappy emoji ''I have never been in love'' really the best secret Burnham can come up with?

*So...how does Harry activate the transporter by just waving his hands? And why can't the crew of the Discovery do that?

*The crew watches the captain die....lots of times....an on one seems to to do anything, like grab Mudd or try and stop him.

*So, sigh, the ship...and the whole Federation is in danger....and Burnham takes time to do some WB-like dancing and flirting to get information out of Ash?

*As Ash is a Starfleet Officer, and not an idiot, is there some reason they don't just say to him ''the ship is in danger, trust me...tell me all about Mudd."?

*Betazed? Wow, this would be way before they joined the Federation....and they have a Bank?

*So Burnham is all like ''oh, yea, a Time Crystal...everyone knows all about them...but the Federation can't use them''. Sigh. And she knows how big a crystal needs to be to travel time?

*Well...Dark Matter Grenades sound cool, if your an writer that know nothing about ''science'' and is just looking for a coolz word....but ''real'' Dark Matter...whatever it is does not seem to effect real matter at all in real life.

*The Dark Matter Grenade ''just'' distengates things....like, sigh, every other weapon...so why does Mudd think it is so ''new''?

*So Mudd hails the ''Klingon ship" and they warp over in like two seconds? Was the ship cloaked and right behind Discovery?

*So finally on time like ''60'' they tell the captain what is going on......why did they wait so long?

*Um, I doubt even the old ''real'' lovable Harry Mudd would ''spare the crew''...I mean he would not be all bloodthirsty murderhobo like the new cool hipster Mudd...but it would be more he did not care.

*And...um...ok, lets say Harry really was going to spare the crew.....how would he do that? He can't really stop the Klingon from doing anything, right? So if the Klingons just ''bark'' and say ''killz them all'', what would Harry do?

*Sure is amazing lucky that at the ''end'' of the Time Loop, Harry Mudds control bracer distengrates....

*The computer sure is suddenly vague right at the end, but...well, maybe it was programed that way...

*Does Discovery's archives really have information on every person in the galaxy? Did they do a keyword search for ''Stella''? And somehow only get the ''Stella and Harry Mudd'' hit?

*Um, the captain's chair is a non critical system? Odd....

*How and why does Harry ''suddenly'' loose control of the computer?

*Baron Grimes warps over to Discovery in like two seconds...or were they just like randomly one light second away to start with?

*Why does Lieutenant Stamets tell the two lovebirds all about the other(s) timelines? It's a bit pointless to say ''well in a timeline and never happened...this happened''. Why not just play real ''non time lord'' match maker? You know like a cool made for kidz WB show

Final-F Little more then a waste of time. Sigh. It is little more then an episode of a WB show....in space.

[Reddish Mage]

Spoiler: Nitpicks to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

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*Darth Ultron in Asterisks.

*The Party-This is the perfect example of what is wrong with this show. They have a party on the Discovery..and is it a typical mature adult party with drinks and conversation? Nope. It is your typical stupid idiotic cool collage kidz party, Woo hoo! So just who are they trying to appeal the show too? The Cool Hipster Party Crowd is never going to watch Star Trek..

Actually, as 'hipster' is the term for things like being insufferably rich, intellectual, organic-loving, liberal, and into alternative lifestyles....what makes you think people that embody that concept wouldn't like Star Trek


*Harry Mudd- Well, we knew he would be back...sigh.

Well you think the dark matter grenades are cool and the andorian spacesuit is hilarious so I guess you are giving a pretty positive review overall on this one.

Still it seems you can't stand what Discovery does with the elements Star Trek it takes and how it adapts them. I would agree Murder Mudd is a bit jarring but your outrage is a bit over the top.

By now, we should know what we are going to get.

Things That Actually Make Sense

*Um, so the USS Discovery is now the most awesome and all powerful ship in the universe and is turning the tide of the war? Too bad they can't show us any of that.

I think you are just saying you dislike the choice of episodes. It makes perfect sense the Discovery is the most powerful ship in Starfleet with its ability to move instantly anywhere. I suppose we could have gotten an episode or two about their missions against the Klingons or helping the Federation, but the question should be, "how does that advance the story." A trend in good storytelling is that each scene, each episode at least, helps advance the overall story. Showing the Discovery in random missions does neither.

*And exactly how much can one dinky little science ship really do in a war anyway?

We know the Discovery is able to jump anywhere in an instant, and leave in an instant. We have every indication it is also powerful ship, and prior Star Trek federation ships have long been used for science but powerfully armed, and, by implication, Discovery is potentially capable of taking out a Klingon starship head-to-head.

*So Specialist Michael Burnham is acting all like a Fish out of Water...but....she had a human step mom, Amanda Grayson, so is there some reason her step mom did not tell her about the Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees and the Moon up above and that thing called Love?

So...the premise of this question is that one can learn how to interact at a party even you think seems out of place for staid Starfleet members and to form romantic attachments with your peers just by talking to your mom. Just no.

*And more so, Specialist Michael Burnham has been among humans for many years, so how can she have never been to a party or had any contact with people at all? Sure, she (aka the writer) makes some stupid comment that she was of a higher rank, but she was not born with that rank. She moved up the ranks like any other member of the crew....so, again, how did she not have any social contact?

See Tu'vok or T'Pol in the early episodes of their respective series. Its easy to envision how a Vulcan-raised human would treat casual social interactions (as essentially meaningless distractions).


*So Lieutenant Paul Stamets is all ''different'' after the spore stuff, but everyone is just like ''oh whatever''?

His partner mentions worrying about him. Michael seems a little taken aback by how nice Stamets is, and both make comments. Those are the only ones interacting with him in the episode.

*Burnham and Ash sure chit chat a lot, like a stupid WB show, in the hallway when they should say ''sorry, can't talk we are on our way to the bridge".

The chit chat you speak of tells you exactly what's on both minds as they walk to the bridge, and the background is that its been on their minds for awhile.

*The Gormagander, is just another perfect example that this show was written by a person who has never watched Star Trek, or simply ''hates that stupid Trek show''. In Star Trek, space whales are not a common thing, unlike lots of other coolz sci-fi. The couple times we have seen such creatures it has always been an amazing thing. But, of course, for Discovery it is just ''oh, yea, a coolz space whale, that is so yesterday, whatever'. Sigh.

They actually absolutely say that the space whales are incredibly rare! That's why there's this whole protocol about why its so important.

*Um, the Gormagander Doom Rule is about the dumbest rule in the universe. If a ship encounters one they must stop everything, capture it and take it to a sanctuary? And it is a Court Marshal Offense to not do so? And does the crew get keel hulled too?

Presumably, the captain could have explained his way out of this sort of court marshal offense. I think you are making out court marshal offenses to be of the highest severity, but they are used for lesser punishments as well. If Starfleet wants to drive home that they want their ships to stop their current mission and save the whales take priority, making not doing so an offense is a logical way to do that.


*Is the sad, weepy WB unhappy emoji ''I have never been in love'' really the best secret Burnham can come up with?
*So, sigh, the ship...and the whole Federation is in danger....and Burnham takes time to do some WB-like dancing and flirting to get information out of Ash?
*As Ash is a Starfleet Officer, and not an idiot, is there some reason they don't just say to him ''the ship is in danger, trust me...tell me all about Mudd."?
*Why does Lieutenant Stamets tell the two lovebirds all about the other(s) timelines? It's a bit pointless to say ''well in a timeline and never happened...this happened''. Why not just play real ''non time lord'' match maker? You know like a cool made for kidz WB show

The content of what you are saying is that "it makes no sense to do that here" but in the context of saving the ship. Michael needed to give Stamets something to shock herself into believing him, and needed to dance with Ash to get the opportunity to talk him into the whole time loop thing. And yes, timeloops is sufficiently weird that no one would believe that sort of thing, as Stamets explains to Michael.

I see a lot of subtext of "I really hate the romantic subplot."


*Betazed? Wow, this would be way before they joined the Federation....and they have a Bank?

This piece of Mudd history is straight out of a TOS episode.

*So Burnham is all like ''oh, yea, a Time Crystal...everyone knows all about them...but the Federation can't use them''. Sigh. And she knows how big a crystal needs to be to travel time?

Burnham is smart, she was on Vulcan, she knows things.



Typical Sci-Fi science

*Um, as an arm chair xeno-biologist, would not beaming a space whale into a Earth normal gravity shuttle bay be harmful to it?

As a couch-logician, wouldn't a creator that could survive the vacuum of space most likely be EXTREMELY resilient to all sorts of hardship? As evidence, look at the Tardigrad, supposedly it was pretty indestructible (except for the spore drive was hurting it).


*So, for Harry's stupid plan to work...he had to find a lonely Gormagander and catch it or did he steal one from a sanctuary?

This is an easy thing to just let go, and anyway, we know the answer. This is Harry Mudd, he stole it.

*Is there some reason the USS Discovery does not detect Mudds ''Jona'' shuttle?

It was in the super-resiliant space whale (see above). It requires a more thorough scan taking place up close in the docking bay to reveal it.

*Even more so....to beam Harry and the ''Jona" shuttle on board the transporter does have to lock onto them with a transporter beam...right? That is how transporters work? So, how did they lock on to them, but not detect them?

Just because Harry could give the teleporter his co-ordinates and let him teleport, doesn't mean the crew had any idea.

*So the first time we see Mudd is his first time on the ship right? How does he take control of the computer in like ten seconds as he is walking about the ship slaughtering people like a murderhobo?

They explain that Mudd has some sort of way of doing so. Also, checkout his TOS appearances.

*So Mudd blows up the ship with some sort of Super Bomb? Like wow, is it powerfull...but where is it? It can't be on his Jona shuttle, right....because that is where the Time Crystal is...and he can't blow that up, right?

Why not? Maybe that's how the time crystal takes effect? Also, Mudd, if he controls the ship, might just make the ship self-destruct, cause we know ships do that and Discovery, by its nature, probably should be able to do that pretty fast.

*Lieutenant Paul Stamets is, um, outside of time now? Because of the silly spores? So can the spores travel in space and time?

*Aheem*...so science: space and time are not truly separate things but exist as sorts of extensions of each other. This is why space-time is relative.

*So the second jump we see...is more like Mudds 30th jump, right? Even though, he beams out of his Jona shuttle and turns on the drive to blow up the ship in like two seconds....

Sure.

*So Lieutenant Paul Stamets jumps like 50 times and proves that he is the most utterly useless waste of space of any Starfleet Officer ever.
*Why does not Lieutenant Paul Stamets, space idiot, go to the captain? Sure, he is the king of the idiots, but really ''ship in danger..tell captin'' is not a hard thought. And sure, the Captain will tell Paully that he is an idiot...but Paulyy can do that secret thing with the captain too...

Stamets did tell the captain, he was not believed. He tells that from Michael Burnham. He said he tried many times but couldn't get prevent anything. After 50 times he decided the key was Michael and Ash.

*And everyone in Starfeelt knows Time Travel is possible....right? We see people in Trek time travel all the time.

Pretty much

*Mudd turns on the Self Destruct with a single voice command? Odd...every other Trek show has lots of code words for this and you need more then one command too.
*So...how does Harry activate the transporter by just waving his hands? And why can't the crew of the Discovery do that?

He has total control over the ship somehow in ways that let him override all those pesky safeguards. He even has unique inputs put in just for himself. Its not an uncommon level of ability among the super-hacker crowd in shows of all types.

You Actually Have a Point

*Everyone says the Time Loop is 30 minutes, but oddly it seems more like six minutes. The loop is party..talk for a couple minutes..Mudd and over.....really like six minutes. And if it is 30 minutes...why does Lieutenant Stamets, who is granted an idiot, not run to Burnam at the star of the loop...explain things to her and then have like 25 minutes to stop Mudd. Oddly we see...he s-l-o-w-l-y walks over to her, and talks for a couple minutes and then he is like ''oh no the loop is over!".....so was he doing uttely nothing and wating to go talk to Burnam when the clock got to like ''only three minutes until the loop resets again?"

Actually, the loop you choose to attack is completely obvious. Stamets wanted to take his time and size up Michael as this was his first conversation with her about the loop.

However, the loop seemed to vary in length after awhile...



*Well...Dark Matter Grenades sound cool, if your an writer that know nothing about ''science'' and is just looking for a coolz word....but ''real'' Dark Matter...whatever it is does not seem to effect real matter at all in real life.

*The Dark Matter Grenade ''just'' distengates things....like, sigh, every other weapon...so why does Mudd think it is so ''new''?

*So Mudd hails the ''Klingon ship" and they warp over in like two seconds? Was the ship cloaked and right behind Discovery?

*So finally on time like ''60'' they tell the captain what is going on......why did they wait so long?

*Um, I doubt even the old ''real'' lovable Harry Mudd would ''spare the crew''...I mean he would not be all bloodthirsty murderhobo like the new cool hipster Mudd...but it would be more he did not care.

*And...um...ok, lets say Harry really was going to spare the crew.....how would he do that? He can't really stop the Klingon from doing anything, right? So if the Klingons just ''bark'' and say ''killz them all'', what would Harry do?

*Sure is amazing lucky that at the ''end'' of the Time Loop, Harry Mudds control bracer distengrates....

*The computer sure is suddenly vague right at the end, but...well, maybe it was programed that way...

*Does Discovery's archives really have information on every person in the galaxy? Did they do a keyword search for ''Stella''? And somehow only get the ''Stella and Harry Mudd'' hit?

*Um, the captain's chair is a non critical system? Odd....

*How and why does Harry ''suddenly'' loose control of the computer?

*Baron Grimes warps over to Discovery in like two seconds...or were they just like randomly one light second away to start with?

[Chen]

Darth Ultron's comment about the transporter and the thing "hiding" inside is spot on. They make this mistake all through Star Trek. There's zero way you could transport something on board without knowing it was there. Transporters disassemble everything they are transporting and recreate them. It's not like it picks you up in some spot and moves you, intact, to another. There can't be anything "hiding" inside something that gets transported because it has to be recreated once your re-materialize. In this case if the "ship" was hidden, it would just be left in space as they transported the creature on board (and presumably there'd be a ship sized vacuum in the creature where the ship was).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Darth Ultron's comment about the transporter and the thing "hiding" inside is spot on. They make this mistake all through Star Trek. There's zero way you could transport something on board without knowing it was there. Transporters disassemble everything they are transporting and recreate them. It's not like it picks you up in some spot and moves you, intact, to another. There can't be anything "hiding" inside something that gets transported because it has to be recreated once your re-materialize. In this case if the "ship" was hidden, it would just be left in space as they transported the creature on board (and presumably there'd be a ship sized vacuum in the creature where the ship was).

Not unless the computer was programmed to exclude objects of technological nature and a certain size.

Computers in Star Trek are good, but most are not AI's. They're fast but dumb machines that do what you tell them to. You do not tell the computer to whenever beaming on board a space whale exclude or report on a space whale's lunch, even if it's still alive or contains rocks, or its intestinal flora, or an unborn child, or an identification implant from the space whale watching society, or a medical device, or a phaser in its pockets. (Yes, space whales wear pants sometimes, why do you ask?) It's not inconceivable that a small space pod could fit within tolerances on large non-suspect spaceborne biological entities. Sure, the information is in a readout somewhere, but nobody reads those unless there's a problem with the machine, or maybe when beaming aboard a Romulan negotiation party or something, someone that could be trying to deceive you. On a routine job the Terminator method of hiding is as far as I can tell pretty valid. I don't even know if the computer even ever calculates what larger structures amount to to begin with, all it cares about is the ability to assemble them molecule by molecule.

Plus for all we know the trick didn't actually work until the 183th try, when the shields were calibrated to interfere with the technobabelizer. That might even have been what caused the minor power surge.



If I had a problem with this episode it's solidly in the "O my god time travel is easily attainable by random people in (this version of) the Trek universe, this has almost as many implications as that time they revealed you can time travel by flying close to the sun" camp.

Now that I think of it, that one was also caused by space whales of a sort. This might be bigger than I realized.

[Chen]

Not unless the computer was programmed to exclude objects of technological nature and a certain size.

Uh but it beamed another person (human in this case) aboard. Somehow I'm pretty sure the transporters DO recognize when they have extra people coming and there should be some sort of alarm with that.

[Mando Knight]

If I had a problem with this episode it's solidly in the "O my god time travel is easily attainable by random people in (this version of) the Trek universe, this has almost as many implications as that time they revealed you can time travel by flying close to the sun" camp.

Now that I think of it, that one was also caused by space whales of a sort. This might be bigger than I realized.

The time crystal was found by Mudd, though, who always seems to have his hands on some sort of unusual alien tech.

The "slingshot" time travel method was actually used in two separate episodes of TOS before it made a reappearance in The Voyage Home.

[Aux-Ash]

Darth Ultron's comment about the transporter and the thing "hiding" inside is spot on. They make this mistake all through Star Trek. There's zero way you could transport something on board without knowing it was there. Transporters disassemble everything they are transporting and recreate them. It's not like it picks you up in some spot and moves you, intact, to another. There can't be anything "hiding" inside something that gets transported because it has to be recreated once your re-materialize. In this case if the "ship" was hidden, it would just be left in space as they transported the creature on board (and presumably there'd be a ship sized vacuum in the creature where the ship was).

I think you're seriously underestimating the amount of data involved in transporting anything. Think about it: the computer has to account for trillions of molecules and have to map them to their exact location. Misplace a single one and you might introduce cancer or the beginnings of a blood clot into someone. Furthermore it also has to account for the velocity and vector of each one, or internal organs will tear themselves apart when they remateriallize. Not to mention the charge they have, or the brain will immediately cease to function. Trying to remove strange metal from them? I hope they don't have any prostethesis they're relying on.

So no, it makes perfect sense that they cannot "simply" filter something out. That would require you to know, ahead of time, what you shouldn't be transporting up and even then it's a tall order. Trying to manually, or even with the help of a computer, remove something from the matter stream is just inviting disaster.
In fact, thinking about it... I'm surprised more people aren't as terrified of the process as Barklay from TNG is.

[Aka-chan]

So no, it makes perfect sense that they cannot "simply" filter something out. That would require you to know, ahead of time, what you shouldn't be transporting up and even then it's a tall order. Trying to manually, or even with the help of a computer, remove something from the matter stream is just inviting disaster.
In fact, thinking about it... I'm surprised more people aren't as terrified of the process as Barklay from TNG is.

We do see them alter something in the matter stream on TNG, though. In the episode "The Most Toys," Data's in the act of firing a disruptor when the Enterprise beams him onboard, and they're able to deactivate it in transit.