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» Flare Sci-Fi Forums » Star Trek » New Trek » DSC 3x13 "That Hope Is You, Part Two" ($$$)

   
Author Topic: DSC 3x13 "That Hope Is You, Part Two" ($$$)
Krenim
Unholy Triangle Fella
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My expectations for this episode were pretty low since I knew we'd be returning to the Su'kal situation. This episode exceeded those low expectations... but it's still not great.

The episode almost immediately answers my question from two episodes ago on whether or not Adira got an overlay. They did; they're Xahean.

Fascinatingly, Gray gets an overlay as well. Either Vulcan or Romulan. I'm guessing Romulan if the outfit's shoulderpads are any indication. I'm guessing this is an unintentional malfunction on the ship's part, since it seems like nobody knows how they would replicate it elsewhere.

I still think the reveal of Su'kal as the cause of the Burn was monumentally stupid. That having been said, I think the great acting from everybody here made it a slightly easier pill to swallow.

Die Hard in Space continues on Discovery. Tilly, the bridge crew, and the DOTS get to be awesome. Owo especially.

New Ni'vari (N'varian? N'varan?) ships! They're called Razors, if I heard the dialogue correctly.
I couldn't get a good look at them. Get some screenshots of those puppies, stat!

My only real problem with the Burnham and Book plot was the turbolift scenes. You know those points from the first two seasons where we see Disco's turbolifts from the outside? Where Disco seems to have WAY more empty space inside it than it should? Well, any attempts to rationalize that have been thrown out the window, as all that empty space becomes a plot point.

Book's empathic abilities allow him to use the spore drive. Nifty.

Also, I think we've known that "Cleveland Booker" was an alias right from the get-go, but Book reveals that it was originally the name of his mentor. We still don't learn his real name, though.

So Osyraa's dead. Pity, actually. With her getting fleshed out a lot last episode, it would have been neat to see more of her vision of the galaxy butting against Starfleet's.

So the ship gets saved and everybody gets rescued.

Culber still seems to be holding a grudge against Burnham. Good. I hope to see where that goes.

Vance, on the other hand, inexplicably jumps on the "Burnham is awesome" train. Since Saru is taking some time to acclimate Su'kal to reality on Kaminar, Vance makes Burnham the new captain of Discovery. I'm not shocked; we all knew the show was going to do this eventually. That still doesn't mean I'm in love with it.

With a new source of dilithium, the Federation starts pulling itself back together. Trill has already rejoined, and Ni'var is in talks. Interesting that there's no mention of Earth.

The Disco crew switches over to the 32nd Century uniforms. I was wondering if/when they would; I think they look a LOT better than the originals.

Adira seems to have joined Starfleet, as they're in one of the new uniforms at the end.

Very interesting that we didn't end the season on any sort of cliffhanger, other than maybe if/when Saru's coming back.

I'll post again later with my thoughts on the season as a whole.

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"Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"

-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged

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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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That ended better than I expected, actually.

Culber isn't the only one not happy; Stamets looked very put out. I expect conflict between him & her, & Book taking some jump spots.

Aurellio was still around! Will he join the crew? Stay with Starfleet? I hope we see more; I liked him. Nice to see Mr. Sahil again as well.

Adira wearing blue stripe makes sence. Tilly wearing it does not. She should be red or gold.

I get a "Nathan Bridger from S3 seaQuest" feel around Saru, that he's gonna show up to do shit at odds with the crew.

Agreed on Osyraa. Having her be not a villain but an adversary would've worked nicely. You could see she was willing to negotiate, had a good sense of worldview; she just had different incompatible ethics & morals.

HoloGray was ibtereating, & I bet somehow that gets expnded on. Disco has holodecks now, right?

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"The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"

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Krenim
Unholy Triangle Fella
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Oops, yeah, I meant Stamets was nursing a grudge against Burnham, not Culber.

And you've got a point on Tilly's uniform. The copper color on her original uniform should translate to gold, but if she's still XO, she might be red.

I would assume Disco has a true holodeck now. Didn't it already have something similar back in Season 1 where Lorca and Tyler were using it for target practice?

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"Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"

-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged

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MinutiaeMan
Living the Geeky Dream
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I had a thought regarding that stupid turbolift scene. It occurs to me that we’ve seen “bigger on the inside” technology in Enterprise’s “Future Tense”, so there may be a tiny bit of rationalization possible there.

It’s still stupid, though. Incredibly wasteful use of internal space.

At this point, I think I’m going to have to accept that Discovery is and always has been The Michael Burnham Show. I don’t dislike Michael, but her messiah complex still bothers me, I don’t think she actually learned anything by being demoted from first officer. I don’t see much character growth, she’s just pushing through same as always and eventually making it work. And I’m a bit disappointed in Admiral Vance, his complete about-face needed more of a buildup as well.

I’m also very perplexed by Osyraa’s complete reversion. Her negotiations with Vance last episode were fascinating and she made several good points, even though her proposal came completely out of the blue both in universe and narratively. And this week it’s like she never made the proposal at all. Any possible nuance was completely lost.

Within the bounds of expectations set up this season, though, I think they did a decent job. But once again like in the first season, they suddenly wrap up in a too-neat bow and reset everything. A dilithium planet has enough for everybody, I guess? But that planet would be a massive target for everyone who’s short of dilithium, and a likely flash point for conflict. And so many planets who were happy to go their own way suddenly are willing to return based on... what? I feel like we’re missing several episodes worth of events here.

And beautiful acting aside, I still despise the premise that a grieving radioactive mutant alien child caused The Burn. [Roll Eyes]

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“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov
Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha

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Krenim
Unholy Triangle Fella
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Thoughts on Season 3 as a whole:

I feel much the same as I did at the end of Season 2. Just as I felt that Season 2 was a marginal improvement on Season 1, I feel that Season 3 was a marginal improvement on Season 2. I'm still enjoying the show, but it still has been hanging on to some of the same old problems that keep it from being truly great.

Major problems:

1. The show can still be really dumb at times. Season 1 introduced the magic fungus drive. Season 2 had Culber transported to magic fungus land by Stamets' tears as well as all the time crystal nonsense. Season 3... had the Burn. Now, I liked the initial mystery of the Burn. Having dilithium fail galaxy-wide for an instant, leading to a massive dilithium shortage as well as an underlying apprehension that it could happen again since the cause was unknown made for good world-building. But then, the mystery got solved. The Burn was caused... by a mutant kid who lost his mommy. Geez, writers, way to drop the ball.

2. Michael Burnham. Like, I get what the writers are trying to do with the character. Her character arc is her road to the captain's chair. They're just not doing it well. Like, at all. And when the writers don't know how to write for the lead character of their own show, the show suffers. I'm still seething over the ending to "Far From Home". Would it really have killed the writers to let the Disco crew save themselves instead of Burnham Ex Machina? And that's just the most egregious example. Now, in a review that I watched for the season finale, the idea was posed that, ultimately, the problem is that the writers have been writing Burnham as if she was the ship's captain even though she hasn't been. I'm not 100% sure that I agree with that assessment, but I think it has enough merit that I'm wondering if just giving her the chair might be the writers trying to fix this issue.

So what was good this season?

1. Going to the 32nd Century. I think this was indeed a good move for the show. Nobody had to grumble about continuity this season, at least. Also, I am actually impressed as to how well they actually integrated the Temporal (Cold) War from Enterprise into the 32nd Century's backstory. I'm hoping to see more world-building for this era next season. Season 3 focused on the Federation and former Federation worlds. I want to see what everyone else has been up to. The Klingons, Cardassians, Bajorans, Dominion, Borg, etc.

2. In general, I still think the special effects are top-notch. The only thing I'm kinda iffy on are some of the ship designs. On the one hand, we've known since Voyager's "Relativity" that traditional Starfleet ship design was gonna get thrown out the window. On the other hand, I'd love to know why these ships look so different. We did get some handwaving on the detached nacelles (which I do think are silly, but at least I can see that being where Starfleet was headed given how the Enterprise-J's nacelles were barely attached to the rest of the ship).

3. The characters. I think Book, Adira, Gray, and Vance were all great additions to the cast. Heck, I even thought Osyraa was a good character once we actually got to know her. Too bad she was killed almost immediately thereafter. I also like what they did with many of the existing characters. Stamets and Culber essentially adopting Adira to start their own family, Detmer going through some PTSD after leaving behind everything she's ever known, etc.

I'm looking forward to Season 4. As I said earlier, giving Burnham the captain's chair might fix some of the issues with the character, even though I wish the writing prior to her promotion had justified said promotion more. If the writers can just avoid any major silliness for one season, the show might actually hit its stride.

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"Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"

-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged

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Lee
I'm a spy now. Spies are cool.
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God, the actress playing the baddie was awful. Barely noticed when she died, she was that inert.

For proper acting, though, the moment when Hugh hugged Gray. He got that shock, the sensation of making physical contact for the first time since he, er, died, exactly right. After a year when many have been alone for so long, it was a perfect little scene.

Here’s an oddity: in what I presume is a promotional still on the TrekMovie review, there is an image of the crew - and Tilly is in red. But she was plainly in blue at the episode end.

https://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/dsc-313-post-18-1280x854.jpg

I’ve been puzzling over the sheer number of bridge crew who’re clearly Ops division, since they were all plainly in the bronze - and now gold. Owo, Bryce and Rhys I guess make sense, but Detmer? Though I guess there are pros & cons to the subject, helmsmen have traditionally been Command division.

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Never mind the Phlox - Here's the Phase Pistols

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Lee
I'm a spy now. Spies are cool.
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Apparently Tilly was in red for filming but changed - really badly - to blue in post, to avoid locking themselves into her being XO next season.

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Never mind the Phlox - Here's the Phase Pistols

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MinutiaeMan
Living the Geeky Dream
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That doesn’t make sense. Even before becoming XO, she was in the COMMAND Training program.

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“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov
Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha

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Lee
I'm a spy now. Spies are cool.
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Yes! And yet when she was (when it still mattered, back in the 23rd century) in fairly sure she was in an Ops uniform. Makes no sense.

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Never mind the Phlox - Here's the Phase Pistols

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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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Well, we don't yet know how 32fleet is organized. Maybe she's blued because of her work with Stamets. Maybe she'll be jumping around, starting in blue for 2 grades of rank, gold another two, & then red. Maybe a dingo ate her baby.

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"The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"

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Spike
Pathetic Vampire
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Maybe she's the new Science Officer?

Booker's real name is Tareckx.

Boy, Discovery's upgrade must've been pretty good. Withstanding being fired upon by the whole Federation fleet.

So the Holoprogramm must be somehow telepathic. Otherwise the whole Romulan Gray thing makes absolutely no sense.

I simply hate the TMBS space shots. I never know what is going on, for instance I have no idea what the Vulcan/Romulan ships look like.

My mind must've wandered off. What exactly was the goal of Booker's torture?

Was it really necessary to beam all the pirates into space? Why not beam them in a holding cell? And why was it necessary to destroy the Veridian? They could've escaped without doing so.

Seemed to me like the explosion damage to the nacelle was gone at the end.

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"Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon

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Lee
I'm a spy now. Spies are cool.
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It wasn’t explicitly stated they were beamed into space. She just said “Beam then off the ship.” So they could have been deposited on the pirate ship itself... Just in time to be obliterated by a massive AM explosion, but it’s the thought that counts.

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Never mind the Phlox - Here's the Phase Pistols

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Spike
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Somehow I forgot to mention the turbolift scene. That was beyond insulting.

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"Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon

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