Welcome back to The Michael Burnham Show starring Michael Burnham!
Yeah, so, for those that had been worrying that it was gonna be the same show, just with different trappings... This episode is NOT going to ease those worries. The only two main characters are Burnham and the new character Booker. It wouldn't have been too bad if it wasn't for the final scene at the comm relay. Seriously, this guy who's been manning the relay meets Burnham and it's the best day of his life. I mean, there are Starfleet ships out there. You're saying that nobody in decades dropped by to check on the relay, maybe do some repairs, and commission this guy while they were there?
I will say this, though: Sonequa Martin-Green was finally given a few chances to be funny/goofy and it was indeed a breath of fresh air.
Booker seems a decent character. We'll see where they go with him.
We find out what the Burn was. I previously guessed that it was related to the Omega molecule, but it looks like I was wrong. Instead, about 100-120 years ago, most of the galaxy's dilithium just... exploded. Huh. So warp drive still works, but with so little dilithium around, warp travel is at a premium. Quantum slipstream is around, but it's apparently still not practical either.
Time travel was completely outlawed following the Temporal Wars, which I'm assuming is a reference to Enterprise's "Storm Front" two-parter.
All-in-all, I'm ambivalent about this episode. Booker's fine and the new setting has potential, but doubling down on Burnham in what is essentially a soft reboot pilot when one of the major critiques of the show has been too much Burnham is not going to win over a lot of folks.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Christ. I haven't even watched it yet & I'm like "this is fucking stupid".
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Also, someone made this Disco/Buck Rogers title mashup & it's fucking aces. https://youtu.be/bZtS87Do47A Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Okay, so welcone to "Star Trek: Andromeda". I hate "fall ofbthe Federstion" bullshit, & wasn't there already canon say the Federation survived well beyond this point? Ignoring that, I guess.
Also ignoring the fact that dilithium is NOT necesary for every type of warp drive. Romulan singularity drives, that coxaial warp drive thing, & I bet the Voth & Borg still run transwarp somehow.
I did like seeing Lurian as one of the thugs not eaten by Molly, though.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
I already miss "Lower Decks".
I hate the space battles in that show. They're nothing but nausea inducing.
Beats me why a Delta shield is part of an emergency package.
Why did they walk all the way to the city? Why not beam there or replicate a ground vehicle.
Maybe divert some funds from the special effects to the make up department. The Andorian, Orion and Tellarite looked really cheap.
That part at the end with the flag was so ridiculously over the top. Geez, no one was around to give a f* whether he decorated his office with it or not. And couldn't he have guessed from the 4 digit registry that the ship is from the past?
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
All that, yes.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shik: Also ignoring the fact that dilithium is NOT necesary for every type of warp drive. Romulan singularity drives, that coxaial warp drive thing, & I bet the Voth & Borg still run transwarp somehow.
Which could be a clue to the identity of the perpetrator. Or maybe not. My personal theory is that it has something to do with the idea that warp drive damages space. Is it canon that that ever got fixed? I know the idea was that Voyager's variable geometry nacelles fixed the issue, but was that ever actually mentioned onscreen? Maybe it got to the point that somebody thought it would be better to wreck warp travel by doing away with dilithium than cause further damage. Then again, my theories have rather consistently turned out to be wrong, so it probably doesn't matter anyway.
quote:Originally posted by Spike: I already miss "Lower Decks".
Same.
quote:Originally posted by Spike: Beats me why a Delta shield is part of an emergency package.
I could see why it would be. True, these ones don't function as communicators, but if you're stuck on a Federation (or Fed-allied) planet and need to prove you're Starfleet to get help or supplies, I could see an official Starfleet delta as being vital.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
*arthurdent* Actually I rather enjoyed it. */arthurdent*
I’m not sure it’s Star Trek anymore though. I’ve long thought that science-fictional science has moved on a lot from the concepts that underpin the science of Star Trek, which stem from the early 1960s. But even so I suspect this is going to be too out-there for a lot of people. It’s literally too divorced from what we know and, I guess, still mostly love.
I can’t see how the subspace deterioration can be a plausible motive for a deliberate Burn. If I have my maths right, then said Burn happened about 700 years after that TNG ep where they discovered the problem. With warp drive as fundamental as it is to galactic society, the problem would have manifested itself long before the Burn however much anyone tried to mitigate it with fancy warp field geometries and what have you.
And of course dilithium-based warp generation isn’t the only game in town. There’s the Romulan method, but who knows what if anything remains of Romulan culture, politics and military power after 700-800 years of no Romulus? That loss of engineering diversity would be truly ironic if it helped ensure the downfall of the Federation, with its aspirations to infinite diversity in infinite combinations..!
Culture wars note: apart from maybe one or two of the goons, I’m not sure there were any white blokes in this episode. I bet there are certain sections of the internet which are literally seething right now!!
Lush cat. Reserving judgement on Book having some sort of Gary Seven deal going on. Alternatively, maybe a Hirogen connection - those dots on his forehead were reminiscent, and he said his family were poachers, which is just another kind of hunter...
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: And of course dilithium-based warp generation isn’t the only game in town. There’s the Romulan method, but who knows what if anything remains of Romulan culture, politics and military power after 700-800 years of no Romulus? That loss of engineering diversity would be truly ironic if it helped ensure the downfall of the Federation, with its aspirations to infinite diversity in infinite combinations..!
Funny you mention that. Unlike previous seasons, all the episode titles have been released already; this one is officially a "part I", but no part II is listed. What IS listed in probably 6-8 weeks time is "Unification III", so obviously there's somethibg going on, but whether it's Federation reunification or the state of future Vulcan-Romulan affairs is anybidy's guess at this point.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Obviously it’s hard to extrapolate anything from one episode. But if the default opinion is that the Burn was deliberate, and done to destabilise the Federation in particular, then what we’re not seeing yet is who (and therefore why). If the idea was conquest, then where are the conquerors? There’s no sense that any great power has benefited, just that everyone has lost. It’s a bit like Brexit really.
So that then leaves either a) a rival power looking to destabilise the Federation to prevent them being a threat to their own holdings; or b) future versions of all those rugged individualists who cropped up now and then, mainly on DSN, like the Maquis, who regarded the Federation as - heh! - soulless minions of orthodoxy. Either feels very on-the-nose right now, what with Putin and Trump supporters and so on.
There’s been no mention yet of Sonja Sohn reappearing. If I had to guess then the Burn will have something to do with her. She was displaying signs of disconnection from humanity, who knows what being catapulted back into the future but without her suit might make her do...
Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
quote:Originally posted by Krenim: We find out what the Burn was. I previously guessed that it was related to the Omega molecule, but it looks like I was wrong. Instead, about 100-120 years ago, most of the galaxy's dilithium just... exploded. Huh. So warp drive still works, but with so little dilithium around, warp travel is at a premium. Quantum slipstream is around, but it's apparently still not practical either.
Pretty sure "The Burn" is what Kirk got after shore leave that one time...
Omega would have been a better (in my opinion) cause of The Burn, although it would make it a bit strange that Craft took one of Discovery's shuttle to warp at the end of "Calypso" - and it would have been fairly unusual for Discovery to have been in one of the only part of space where warp drive still works. That said I'd assume Omega is going to play a part somewhere, considering the line about how the Gorn had destroyed subspace for two light years at some point.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Craft may actully be in the 42nd century now that we have this new info.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I mostly liked the episode. Everything with Burnham and Book felt appropriately unbalanced, because as fans we’re just as much in the dark about this new time frame as she is. Her excited fascination as she spots new but familiar technology was fun, and Hyper/Stoned-Burnham was just hilarious. (“[The cargo] was temperature sensitive and really valuable, so it’s probably ice cream.”) The scenes with Sahil were typical over-the-top Disco Drama, but at least I like the sentiment they’re expressing even if it’s kinda silly.
But it wouldn’t be Star Trek if we didn’t quibble over the technology!
I agree that the story behind The Burn seems... wrong somehow. First off, dilithium has *never* been shown as the only way to achieve FTL travel. For that matter, dilithium isn’t even supposed to be a “power” source, but rather the means to regulate the matter/antimatter reaction. I can think of so many choices off the top of my head, including just using “simple impulse” (aka fusion reactors) like the Romulans in “Balance of Terror.” And also, pick any of Voyager’s drives-of-the-week. (Minus points because this episode specifically mentioned quantum slipstream and benamite crystals.)
I think it’s pretty clear that Discovery’s spore drive is going to turn out to be the salvation and catalyst for the reestablishing of the Federation.
And why does it require a Starfleet officer to raise the (civilian) Federation flag?
On the positive side, I definitely liked our first glances at the control panels and other interactive technology... it’s the first time that the controls felt suitably “advanced” in a way that I couldn’t immediately figure out how they worked, but could still see the logical pattern to them. (La Sirena’s holo-interface was neat, but pretty straightforward.) Book’s flexing peg-pad (or whatever you call that kid’s toy, that’s what I thought of) looked neat.
Finally, did anyone else get a Farscape vibe when Burnham collided with Book’s ship the minute she came out of the wormhole? Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Thing is, the answers will probably be predictable - or predicted by someone at least along the way. Most of the big ones so far have been. Tyler is Voq. Burnham is the Red Angel. The Mirror Universe is involved somehow (I don’t think I recall anyone ever suggesting Lorca was actually his MU counterpart?)...
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
The more I think about it, the less credible I find it that Warp drive was still the #1 travel method a 1,000 years later.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
I dunno. They thought back in the 1960's that we'd be zipping around in flying cars, but we aren't. And last I heard, Avery Brooks is still angry about that.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I really hope there’s a good fucking explanation for this dilithium thing. Dilithium doesn’t bloody blow up. Trilithium does. Surely they can’t have confused the two? I do wonder whether the lack of an Okuda to point these things out is what lies behind some of the howlers nuTrek throws up.
(though there were howlers even then! Oh, sure, of course the Dominion would outsource the production of the drug that keeps their soldiers loyal to a bunch of gangsters like the Son’a, that makes perfect sense, I can’t possibly imagine what might go wrong there...)
It’s pretty ironic now that DSC ignores so much of the trappings of its original time period, when we have LDS that - for all it’s set 15 years after it ended - faithfully renders the look of a TNG-period show.
Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :
The work of eco-terrorists? Or some dastardly enemy?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Originally posted by Spike: The more I think about it, the less credible I find it that Warp drive was still the #1 travel method a 1,000 years later.
Yeah, you’d think that by the 32nd century, Starfleet would be able to use the Borg’s transwarp conduits or reverse engineer them for their own use. You don’t need warp engines if you’re just using a conduit to get places.
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