posted
A fun episode for Disco's return, although it would have been nice if the show's momentum hadn't ground to a halt for a month of Prodigy.
I am really enjoying the character of Rillak so far. She manages to be a great foil to Burnham while still being portrayed as a reasonable authority figure. The way she grilled both Burnham and Vance about Book and Tarka was spot on.
Meanwhile, Tarka is all "Oops, I need this stuff to build the weapon." How Book manages to keep himself from throttling him, I'll never know, but they go in search of the... uh... isolynium?
Vance meets with Burnham later and tells her to go after Book, contrary to Rillak's earlier orders. Burnham is able to use the pretext of finding a star chart of Species 10C's extra-galactic neighborhood, which is just outside the galactic barrier. She also takes Owo with her.
Both Book and Burnham try to negotiate for the isolynium, but neither has enough latinum for it. Book and Tarka try to sniff out some cheaters to raise the cash, while Owo gets into the ring to help Burnham raise the amount. Both teams' approaches have some niftiness. Book and Tarka manage to find a changeling. While the morphing effects look a bit different, the changeling makeup for their default Odo-ish look is the same. Owo and Burnham raise the cash once Owo fakes a few losses and then curbstomps her opponent.
In all this, we do get a nice little scene where we see Culber is feeling very guilty about not helping Book enough to prevent this chain of events. Stamets tells him its not his fault, and gets him to go on a walk with him to relax.
Book eventually wins the isolynium in a card game, but not before Burnham puts a tracer on it.
Rillak isn't happy to find out that Burnham not only went after Book but failed to catch him. Burnham, however, pulls out the star charts that she did manage to get. Soon after, we find out that Species 10C has set up some kind of energy barrier around their system. A short conversation later, and we figure out what the DMA actually is: A mining tool. It is extracting some mineral that Species 10C seems to use to maintain the field. Vance makes the great point that if something this powerful is merely a mining tool, what are their weapons like?
I have to say that this was another great example as to how much better Disco is dealing with Burnham this season. Even though this episode focuses a lot on her, it not only felt way more organic but also fun due to her chemistry with Book.
-------------------- "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
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I just ended up fast-forwarding through it. Just not convinced by Book’s decision to align with Tarka. Don’t feel like watching Burnham feeling all tortured for another however many episodes before she inevitably has to kill him to stop the weapon being detonated.
posted
Vance called out the Eisenberg class by name in dialogue. It’s as canon as it can be now! The context implies it might not be the first choice of ship for a chase, maybe it’s not the fastest or best armed.
There were some surprisingly lighthearted moments for a story with such weighty ramifications for the characters. Owo got some great moments and a hilariously awesome nickname.
And her best moment of all was psychoanalyzing Tarka on the sidelines. The dude’s got ulterior motives and the only thing that’s surprised me about him so far is that he apparently DIDN’T create the DMA.
This episode continues one of my pet peeves of the season, having the characters make very specific leaps of logic to the apparently-correct answer without providing the viewers enough buildup and evidence. The first big one was assuming that because the anomaly jumped 1000 light years that it MUST be artificial, when we’ve seen anomalies jump around like the graviton ellipse. Then Tarka showed up able to make a suspiciously accurate recreation of the anomaly based on homemade tech and incomplete sensor readings. This week they assume that the DMA is a minion dredge because it apparently sucks up boronite, but wouldn’t it suck up a hell of a lot of other stuff too? Very strange.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Well, I, for one, have given up on the show. I already have 3 streaming abos and I refuse to get a 4th one. And by now I'm too annoyed by every aspect of the show to pirate it. Hell, I even enjoy VOY reruns compared to DIS and I very much loathed VOY back in the days.
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
Registered: Mar 2000
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