In my opinion, not a bad episode per se, but definitely padded. Once the episode was over, I had to ask myself "What actually happened here?"
I am really enjoying the character of Laris, particularly because she's lampshading the heck out of everything Romulan.
So now we have a Romulan organization even more super-secret than the Tal Shiar that's out to get all artificial life, and apparently has been around forever. Given that the Vulcan commodore later seems to be in on it, I'm wondering if it has its origins on Vulcan.
Even though nobody says the actual words, it seems that Picard is indeed developing irumodic syndrome.
Third f-bomb in Trek now, and from an admiral no less.
Soji and Narek are already an item. That was fast.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I agree that more Laris is a good thing, but her device that can literally let you watch and hear past events in a place through the "particle residuum" is 100% bonkers magic and shouldn't be a thing.
And would someone please let the writers know that, just because their characters are allowed to say "shit" and "fuck", that doesn't mean they should.
I will go ahead and name a couple of positives. I like that they've brought back the rank of commodore. Also, the secret Romulan lieutenant's performance in that last scene makes me think we could get some proper villainous scenery-chewing out of her at some point. That would be fun.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I, too, welcone the reinstation of commodore, something I've put forth myself.
Tamlyn Tomita! As a baddie! It's like original-issue Laurel Takeshima! Also, Ann Magnuson as bitchy Clancy. Interesting casting.
David Paymer as a doctor (the CMO?) from Stargazer, a nice idea. Irumodic syndrome isn't the shock that it should be, because we been knew for 25 years. I liked that line about "getting yourself killed first", because that's how this should end, with dead!Picard. I know this thing has another season ahead of it, but the whole schmeer should wrap up that way. (Incidentally, is this storyline spanning seasons, or is it gonna wrap up at the end of this? Are we getting a single 10-episode season of buildup & exposition?)
Soji gettin' her freak on (Lil Jon)OKAAAAAYYY!!(/Lil Jon)
More Disco connections: the Kelpian in the interview group (which I missed last week), the holo Discotution
More proof this & Disco are AU spun-off from Abramsverse: the shuttles in the flashback scene are from there
Starship design is ugly af in their 2399.
I continued to be dismayed at the need to constantly & consistently dystopianize the Federation. Section 31 & moral grey areas worked on DS9 because they stayed rooted in what it really was. Now we have everything since Abrams (the Federation is "a peacekeeping armada"?) destroying that idea. Fourteen species threatened to "pull out" of the Federation if the Romulans were helped? I'm sorry, but no. No amount of whatever would make that happen in the real Federation. I know they're trying to stay relevant & base off modern issues, but it's the wrong way to do it so ham-handedly & through worldbuilding (or rather, worldgutting).
I dunno, man. There's enough fucked-up shit in the world already. I don't need it in my hope spring, too.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
I'm not sold on this Romulan cabal. Just another Section 31 rehash with a farfetched premise at its core. They need to come up with a very good reason for the anti-androids stance.
The episode was heavy on magical technobabble. Not surprising. The've shown so much sophisticated technology on Discovery, that now they have to come up with even more outlandish technology to show progress.
What the hell were the writers smoking when they came up with character names? Naáshala Kunamadéstifee sounds more like an Indian name not Trill. I guess she could be half Human/Tril? And an intelligence officer named Oh? Watched too much James Bond, eh?
Nice touch to bring back the Commodore rank and feature an old Stargazer crewmate.
I got the impression they had Nechayev in mind for the C-in-C.
Apparently no names and registries on the rescue fleet ships.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"...the holo Discotution"
Oh, yuck. I didn't notice that. Since we already know that the NCC-1701 looked basically the same in DS9 as it did in TOS, we're left with either PIC taking place in a different timeline, or Starfleet displaying a fictional starship in their lobby for some reason.
"Starship design is ugly af in their 2399."
I'm not sure we saw any 2399 ships, but, yeah, I wasn't really into the 2385 ships.
"Fourteen species threatened to 'pull out' of the Federation if the Romulans were helped?"
Is it just me, or was it weird that they were using the word "species" in that conversation? I would have expected "planets".
"Naáshala Kunamadéstifee sounds more like an Indian name not Trill."
Too be fair, you just made reference to the fact that there are many different types of names on Earth, while arguing that all names from Trill have to sound the same. I realize Trek has a long history of monocultural alien planets, but that's one tradition that I wouldn't complain if they subverted a little.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: Since we already know that the NCC-1701 looked basically the same in DS9 as it did in TOS, we're left with either PIC taking place in a different timeline, or Starfleet displaying a fictional starship in their lobby for some reason.
The CBS Canon is a third continuity alongside the Star Trek Original Universe and the JJ-verse, mixing and matching elements from the two and, explicitly and repeatedly per Kurtzman, treating the previously non-canon novels and such as canon, such as can be done with such disparate, usually one-off material.
Even if Trek's novels were a rock-solid, painlessly plug-and-play addition to the old OU, however, the mere act of grafting the two distinct continuities together (not to mention the snitching of JJ stuff) makes a new, third continuity, by logical necessity.
As I like to say, the CBS Canon is Tuvix.
That said, I dig the commodore reference, too.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
If you know me, I love me some starships and we haven't seen too many of those yet.
So... for the uniform redesign, I mean it's basically an updated Voyager uniform. And it's fine, except I don't get why it does that whatever in the middle I pointed out. Personally I still think the First Contact uni's were the best followed by the TOS movies ones. One thing I really don't like though is the rank on the upper chest. I know that's how Enterprise did it... but on the collar really was the best placement.
I know this was pointed out in a previous thread but the use of common vernacular does seem a bit off. Like it works in the Orville....which is full of modern day pop culture references for a world set 400 years from now. But for a Star Trek series, people using "colorful metaphors" as Spock would put it, or saying "dude" ... just seems off for some reason. I guess what I mean is, would people in 2399 still speak like they're in 2020? Or would that be like people in 2020 speaking like people in 1620? It's such a super minor nitpick though.
Overall though, it's been a good first 2 episodes. At least it doesn't suffer from trying to be super woke like ST:SJW... I mean STD.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
..."Super woke"?
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Also, y'know what? Lemme find out that this "Zhat Vash" or whatever's big fuckin' secret is that all Romulans going back to the exodus from Vulcan have & are all actually been some sort of breedable replicant biodroid thing, or that something like that is why they left Vulcan or some other similar habd-waving fuckery.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Are we sure Commodore Oh is a Vulcan?
Also, Picard doesn’t “get” science fiction. Of course he doesn’t, he’s living it! The choice of book (only alluded to but the title was clearly seen) was a nice touch, since Asimov’s stories directly inspired Data’s positronic brain.
The thing I’m most curious about is the Borg cube. Soji implies that the full Borg collective is still out there, so it seems that the events of “Endgame” didn’t hurt them too badly. It seems the cube is “owned” by the Romulans but they’re sharing access with the Federation for salvage and apparently de-assimilating the drones. I wonder when and how this cube was catastrophically severed.... was this Hugh’s cube, or a different one?
I empathize with the frustration about the dystopian themes... but I think Star Trek has always been not just aspirational, but a mirror of current culture. It’s a fallacy to assume that once you’ve achieved utopia it’s automatically going to stay a utopia. In story they’re focusing on the Mars attack as the trauma point, but I can only assume that the Dominion War had to have been an even greater trauma for everyone. I kinda wish they brought that up, though it would be harder to explain for those who didn’t watch DS9.
I definitely wish they didn’t push the cynical view quite so hard, and offered an aspirational story... but it’s still early in the season. I’m definitely curious to see where this goes!
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"I know this was pointed out in a previous thread but the use of common vernacular does seem a bit off. Like it works in the Orville....which is full of modern day pop culture references for a world set 400 years from now. But for a Star Trek series, people using 'colorful metaphors' as Spock would put it, or saying 'dude' ... just seems off for some reason. I guess what I mean is, would people in 2399 still speak like they're in 2020? Or would that be like people in 2020 speaking like people in 1620? It's such a super minor nitpick though."
When you say "for some reason", I think the reason is obvious : It seems off because Trek has spent over 50 years not doing that. Yes, the characters speak more-or-less modern English, even though actual English in the 24th century might be as different from ours as ours is from Elizabethan English. It's even perfectly reasonable to set a show far in the future and have people use modern slang—plenty of shows do that. If we need an explanation, we say that whatever future slang they're "really" using is being translated to its modern equivalent for the benefit of the audience, just like the rest of their language is. But the difference is that Trek is already largely established as not doing that. It's part of the style. And when they start straying too far from that style, it stops feeling like the show is part of the same family as the other shows.
"The CBS Canon is a third continuity alongside the Star Trek Original Universe and the JJ-verse, mixing and matching elements from the two and, explicitly and repeatedly per Kurtzman, treating the previously non-canon novels and such as canon, such as can be done with such disparate, usually one-off material."
As far as I know, the people running these shows still think they're in the same timeline as TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and the TOS and TNG films. Even though that's just not possible for DIS. PIC still could have been in the proper continuity, though, if they could have restrained themselves.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Yeah, I think we could largely hand-wave away the Discoprise now that DSC s2 is done and dusted and we won't be seeing it again unless there is a Pike TV show - but to then use it in the Starfleet Command sequence just feels like a massive fuck-you to a lot of people.
Conicidentally, there was a spy in Doctor Who a couple of weeks ago whose codename was O.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
From what I'm hearing, a Pike show is getting more & more likely.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shik: ..."Super woke"?
Not gonna lie, I've never watched STD, but what I've seen... yeah woke.
Timeline wise... I guess it makes sense that this exists in an altered timeline. The destruction of Romulus as mentioned in ST'09 by Spock and a 20-something Kirk commanding the Enterprise happened in the ST:P timeline.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I don't know that I want to continue this lone of questioning because I fear I might disgustingly angry.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Theory 1: Romulans are actually Vulcan Cylons.
Theory 2: Vulcans created some kind of synthetic life and the Romulan exodus was a result of religious objection to this.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
The Borg are okay to harvest, though.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
quote:Originally posted by Fabrux: Theory 1: Romulans are actually Vulcan Cylons.
Theory 2: Vulcans created some kind of synthetic life and the Romulan exodus was a result of religious objection to this.
I highly suspect Theory 1 is correct. And I have very mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, yeah, it'd be Trek blatantly ripping off BSG by having the Rommies be the Thirteenth Tribe of Vulcan.
But on the other hand, we've seen a number of strange things concerning the Rommies over the years that don't make sense if they were just Vulcans that left their homeworld only two millennia ago. Things like Vulcans being unable to give blood to Rommies. I think the most popular theory explaining that has thus far been genetic damage/mutations from the nuclear wars that led to the schism, but... I dunno.
I have to admit I'm not disgusted by the idea itself; just annoyed at it being blatantly ripped from another sci-fi show.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
C'mon, Krenim, there's no originality here anymore. The whole tardigrade issue showed that.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Nonsense. All this originality has happened before, and all this originality will happen again.
Clearly, the answer is what I figured out over at DITL:
"Now that the glass bottom was broken by Star Wars, they could just say "the dead speak!" and have Picard see Shatner-Kirk hooked up to Romulan Borg tech, the shadowy figure behind it all, his own post-Norman, post-Korby disdain for "synths" the secret reason he sought to put all these pieces into play."
This even explains how a biological person with a positronic brain could have super-strength, since of course she's Kirk's biological daughter . . . the super-jump was just her manipulation of the midiSwaggerons.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
My theory is the opposite: the Vulcans are artificial, and drove the original Romulans off their own world.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)