It is rare that a “previously on” segment at the top of an episode will make me squee. Generally it’s just there as a reminder of what happened before and a primer on what will be important in the episode that the scenes are a prelude to. It’s paperwork, setting you up for the story to come.
But this week, Discovery made me squee—and also geeble and bounce and generally nerd out something fierce—when they kicked the episode off with a retro-style “Previously on Star Trek,” using the 1966 logo for the show, and then showing scenes from “The Cage.” They pretty much sold me on “If Memory Serves” from that moment forward. (It also was a big middle-finger to those who insist that Discovery simply must take place in an alternate timeline, as this firmly places this new show in the same timeline/continuity as the other six TV shows and the first ten movies.)
Luckily, the episode itself lived up to that tease.
Last week, I said I was looking forward to seeing Anson Mount’s Pike deal with being exposed once again to the Talosians and this week’s trip to Talos IV gave me all I was hoping for. But even before that, the cut from Jeffrey Hunter in the scenes from “The Cage” to Anson Mount on the bridge of Discovery was magnificent. I thought the casting of Mount was perfect when it was announced, and “If Memory Serves” just reinforces that.
But what really got me was the look on his face when the image of Vina appeared in the ready room. That was the moment I was waiting for, and Mount managed to show a tremendous range of emotions in that one instant: shock, confusion, desire, anger. His trip to Talos IV had a huge impact on him, and Mount shows us every emotion that this puts Pike through. I’m not one for soulmates, in fiction or in real life, but it’s obvious that Pike and Vina believe that they are each others’ soulmates, and the tragedy of their separation is etched on Mount’s face.
We get more new castings of old roles in this, the biggest being Melissa George as Vina. Some of Discovery‘s recastings have been lateral moves (Rebecca Romijn’s Number One, replacing Majel Barrett), some have been good if not quite as great as the original (James Frain, not as good as Mark Lenard—though he’s light-years better than Ben Cross), and some have been improvements (Mia Kershner, eclipsing Jane Wyatt and Winona Ryder). This is the first that truly fails, though it’s not so much George’s fault, as Susan Oliver was simply stellar as Vina. It would be hard for anyone to live up to that, and George really doesn’t. She does fine, mind you, it’s just mildly disappointing.
Talos IV is beautifully re-created, managing to evoke the broken mountainous landscape of “The Cage” while actually looking like an alien world instead of a sound stage and a matte painting with rocks strewn about. We even get the singing plants that stop singing when you touch them, a lovely callback. And the update to the Talosians’ makeup is also perfectly fine. I did notice that they avoided showing us the back of their heads, so the reason why I called them “buttheads” last week is not obvious. Having said that, they’re still buttheads for other reasons, as they exact a very nasty price from Burnham in order to get them to help sort out Spock’s mind. One of the ways in which the Talosians were impressively alien in “The Cage” and “The Menagerie” was the weird-ass makeup design, plus using male voices and female actors to play them. Twenty-first-century prosthetics make that much work not necessary, but the writing leans into the Talosians being emotional voyeurs, eager to experience life through others, that ability having atrophied in their centuries below the surface as telepaths. Remember, these guys kidnapped a whole mess of aliens for their little menagerie.
(Burnham’s setting a course to Talos only results in the computer telling her that the sector is forbidden, ditto Discovery heading there later. There’s no mention of a General Order, nor of the death penalty as a punishment for going there. This lends more credence to my theory: while Pike’s trip to that planet resulted in it being quarantined and classified, General Order #7 won’t be put into effect until after this season of Discovery, and may well be due in part to the events of this season.)
This is a superb episode, which manages to cram a great deal into its running time, without ever feeling rushed or overstuffed. We get revelations about the Red Angel, furthering the pitfalls of Culber’s resurrection, more intrigue with Section 31, revisiting Talos IV, showing us how Saru has changed since losing his fear ganglia, and finally explicating the rift between Burnham and Spock.
Speaking of Spock, we also finally get Ethan Peck really playing Spock, as opposed to just muttering a lot, and he nails it. Like Zachary Quinto before him, he’s not impersonating Leonard Nimoy, but he matches the late master’s body language and tone. I particularly like the economy of movement when he decides to escape the loony bin, calmly moving through the cell distributing neck-pinches and such.
I want to pause a second and sing the praises of Discovery‘s fight choreography, which has been stellar and suited to the people involved. The phaser fights in the Mirror Universe last season were all superlative. Georgiou’s fights all are perfectly tailored to Michelle Yeoh’s mad martial arts skillz. And the two fights in this episode each fit the participants, with Spock calmly taking his opponents down with efficiency, a minimum of fuss, and economy of movement (ditto for when Spock wordlessly forces Burnham to fly through the Talosians’ illusory singularity). Meanwhile, the Culber/Tyler fight in the mess hall is a (deliberate) mess, as Tyler tries to simply defend himself, and Culber is wild and undisciplined.
I was more than a little stunned by Saru’s response to two people fighting in the mess hall, to wit, to let them fight it out. Pike calls him on it, but gently. Saru himself points out that code of conduct regulations don’t really cover how a resurrected human should deal with confronting the human/Klingon hybrid sleeper agent who killed him. Besides, they both needed the catharsis. Pike agrees, as long as it’s a one-time thing, and he also mentions that the old Saru would never have acted that way. I have to say that I’m glad that Saru’s changes are being done subtly rather than the overt snottiness and insubordination we got in “The Sound of Thunder.” He should still be Saru, after all, but one with more confidence, and who will sometimes make mistakes. It helps having someone as subtle and magnificent as Doug Jones in the role of course…
Speaking of mistakes, Burnham, it turns out, made a doozy. The rift between an adolescent Burnham and a younger Spock came about because Burnham tries to leave home to keep Sarek and Amanda’s home safe from logic extremists who have targeted the ambassador because of the presence of humans and halfbreeds in his home. Spock doesn’t want her to go, so Burnham responds like a teenager: cursing Spock out and calling him names to get him to let her go.
As a revelation this is—okay? I guess? I mean, I can see how that would affect pre-adolescent Spock, but the fact that he still holds a grudge against Burnham about it decades later is more than a little ridiculous for someone who values logic over all. Though it does show why Spock went so far in the direction of choosing his Vulcan heritage over his human one, since his favorite human acted like a total creep to him…
Having said that, we do finally get Mount and Peck in a room together, and you see the respect and the friendship there. Pike’s loyalty to Spock has been muted by Burnham’s more familial relationship with the franchise’s most popular character. This episode reminds us quite nicely that this is a relationship between captain and officer that was deep enough for Spock to commit several crimes in order to aid Pike.
We also get a more significant look at Zombie Culber, and it’s not encouraging. Culber has the memories of Hugh Culber, but not the emotions that go with them—he knows what his favorite food is supposed to be, however he can’t summon any joy at eating it. Worse, Stamets is trying way too hard (not that you can blame him even a little bit) to bring things back to normal. Except “normal” isn’t Stamets waiting on Culber hand and foot, normal is Stamets spending way too much time in his lab. For that matter, “normal” isn’t having the guy who killed you be temporarily assigned to the same ship you’re on. (Not to mention that “normal” doesn’t usually include being resurrected from the dead.)
What’s great about the mess-hall sad-fight between Tyler and Culber is that it shows up how much alike the two of them are. Neither knows who they really are anymore. I’m really curious to see where this all goes. Star Trek has generally been dreadful at dealing with the likely psychological consequences of someone coming back from the dead (e.g., Spock following Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Uhura following “The Changeling“), and I’m glad that they’re finally rectifying that with Culber. We already saw last year that you can’t go back to the way things were, and Stamets and Culber are getting a nasty lesson in that now.
And then we find out that mysterious signals are being sent from Discovery and the spore drive has been sabotaged. Evidence points to Tyler being responsible for both, though he denies it. One assumes that Airiam—who has been compromised by the Probe From The Future—is involved. (Based on the previews, Airiam’s possession will come to a head next week, and I’m really glad they’re not stretching that out too long.)
There are still lots of questions here. Who’s the Red Angel? Who sent the probe back that is now infiltrating Airiam? Why has Spock been framed for murder? (Not that there was any doubt, but it’s nice to have formal confirmation that all Spock did was neck pinch a few folks.) How will our heroes save the galaxy? (We know they will, as we know the Trek universe is around for at least another millennium thanks to “Calypso,” not to mention Voyager‘s “Living Witness.”)
Keith R.A. DeCandido is quite sure that using footage from “The Cage” in the “previously on” segment won’t slow down most of those who insist that Discovery is in an alternate timeline, like, say, the one of the Bad Robot movies, but we can hope. Keith will be at Emerald City Comic-Con next weekend in Seattle. Find him mostly at Bard’s Tower, Booth 1121, alongside a bunch of other authors, among them Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon, and Jonathan Maberry, as well as the occasional bit of programming.
Directorial choices
That “previously on Star Trek” with clips from “The Cage” (1965) and the MTV-like transitions, then the cut to Pike’s face — like, WHUHHH? How are we meant to process the different film quality, costumes, Talosian makeup, and actors? I mean, audiences are already complaining that we’re supposed to take the aesthetic change on faith, and now it’s rubbed in our collective faces. It would’ve been more consistent (additional cost, but cheap relative to DSC’s movie-quality expenses) to re-shoot with new-Pike, new-Spock and new-Number One in new-quarry.
There’s a rolling camera exterior shot (the sort of thing introduced by the Abrams movies), then another rolling shot into the bridge of the Section 31 ship (dizzying!) but fortunately only one. (No turbolift-pinball this ep.)
The “workpod moving stuff around the docking bay, so there’s action in the background” seems gratuitous.
Worldbuilding and design
Confirmation that Section 31 is part of Starfleet’s command structure, since Leland and Georgiou get orders from admirals with normal livery. Interesting that it’s a group — four of them, representing the traditional four founding members of the UFP — human, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite.
The images of the future (Red Angel > Spock > Burnham) show several planets being destroyed, so at least we’ve avoided the “Earth is always the target” trope. Unfortunately the saga hasn’t really established distinctive looks for key planets so they’re recognizable at a glance.
The “Talos IV black hole” illusion is a look created for the movie “Interstellar” in consultation with physicist Kip Thorne (no relation).
Cameos
Brief speaking appearance by security officer Nhan.
In the background of the bridge (near Tilly) by the motorcycle-helmeted officer (not Airiam) last seen on the Shenzhou.
On the bridge by orange giant-head no-human-face XT.
By four of Reno’s “kids”, which hover into the mess to tidy the furniture after the Culber-Tyler fisticuffs.
Things that bother me
“The forests of Vulcan’s Forge”. It’s called “the forge” because it’s an exceptionally harsh desert (Memory Alpha entry).
Shuttle with a transporter, which is not a capability seen in TOS. A transporter stage (at least according to the intent of the published technical manuals) is just the tip of the iceberg, and that’s in the TNG era — you’d expect a TOS-era equivalent to be even bulkier.
By the same rationale, “the kids” are implausibly compact.
When Burnham’s shuttle returns to Discovery, its ramp unfolds in segments, rather like the gravity projector used to capture the asteroid at the start of the season.
XT characters with giant latex heads, but the rest of the body is entirely human in shape, with no differences in proportion or musculature. (That would incur the additional expense of a modified uniform.) Saru does it right, with the elongated digitigrade feet. Strangely, The Orville has featured more non-humanoid crew than has Discovery.
I’m disappointed that they didn’t keep the androgyny of the Talosians intact, or at least their physical delicacy. They were meant to be frail and thin because they’d evolved toward the mental and away from the physical.
Pet peeve: I see and hear a lot of people these days using the word “matte painting” to refer to a painted backdrop on a film/TV set. That’s not what the word means. A painted backdrop simulating a landscape is a cyclorama (while a translucent, backlit image of the sort used to simulate a cityscape or landscape through a window is called a translight). The “matte” in “matte painting” means “mask” — an image that masks part of another image to create a composite of the two. A matte painting is a painted image that expands a live-action image by having that image projected into a gap in the painting or optically/digitally composited with it in post-production. If there’s no matte (masking or image combination) involved, then it’s not a matte painting, just a painting. The Rigel fortress in “The Cage” was a matte painting, but the Talos IV landscape was a cyclorama.
@1/Philip Thorne: “That “previously on Star Trek” with clips from “The Cage” (1965) and the MTV-like transitions, then the cut to Pike’s face — like, WHUHHH? How are we meant to process the different film quality, costumes, Talosian makeup, and actors?”
Did you see Doctor Who: “Twice Upon a Time,” the 2018 New Year’s Day special? It opened in almost the same way — showing stock footage from 1966’s “The Tenth Planet” with William Hartnell as the First Doctor, then morphing him into David Bradley, who took over the role for the special, re-enacting some of Hartnell’s lines.
The way we “process” it is simply by understanding the difference between fiction and reality. This is not a documentary of real events, it’s a bunch of stories being told by actors and artists. The characters look different for the same reason that Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet doesn’t look like Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet — because this is theater, and the same parts can be played by many different actors. Why that should be hard for anyone to “process” is beyond me.
I remember The Six Million Dollar Man doing the same thing when they brought Jaime Sommers (the Bionic Woman) back from the dead to set up her spinoff. They intercut footage of Martin E. Brooks as Rudy Wells giving backstory exposition with flashback clips of Alan Oppenheimer as Rudy in the original episodes, and just expected the audience to understand that the role had been recast and not worry about it.
This episode killed, or at least horribly maimed, my pet theory that Michael ends up being the Red Angel. If the past that RA remembers — the one that leads to catastrophe, the one she’s trying to avert — includes Michael’s death, then the RA can’t be Michael. Right? Time-travel stories give me a headache.
And my one complaint about the use of Airiam here is that we don’t really know her well enough to care that she’s been co-opted by the Time Squids. She has been this alluring cypher up until now: not a redshirt, but at the same time completely free of notable personality traits or personal history. We’re not even certain what species she is, for pete’s sake, and most of the time I call her Robot Lady because I can’t remember her name. If this thread ends with her destruction, rather than her continuing presence and a better sense of the entity she’s supposed to be, I’ll be deeply disappointed, because what a waste of potential that would be.
Quoth Phillip Thorne: “How are we meant to process the different film quality, costumes, Talosian makeup, and actors?”
The same way I “process” that the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, and Dr. Strange were created in the early 1960s and yet have not aged fifty-plus years in the time since. The same way I “process” that both Dick York and Dick Sargent played Darrin on Bewitched. It’s fiction, it’s not that difficult.
We’re not Thermians watching historical documents. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My wife recently became a Star Trek fan after I received Season One of Discovery for Christmas. After insisting we watch all of it twice she wanted CBS All Access so we wouldn’t have to wait a year to watch Season Two. Since they were included we have started watching the other series as well, starting with Enterprise. (We started joking about how many episodes would pass before T’Pol got naked again. She didn’t in Season Four and the show was cancelled. Coincidence? LOL!) After we finished it I planned on skipping TOS and go directly to TNG, since even she, a new fan, had seen many of the original episodes. But before that I played the Menagerie for her, before last week’s episode, so she could see what happens to Captain Pike. So imagine our surprise when last week’s episode ends with Burnham & Spock leaving for Talos IV and then this week’s opening. She was delighted and that illustrates why I strongly disagree with #1 above. Star Trek is better when the past is acknowledged.
I too got a jolt during the first minute – I thought it was awesome.
Afterwards I also thought – there are going to be so many haters that didn’t like/get it.
C Oppenheimer: Thank you for sharing that. It made me smile almost as much as this episode did. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For the “previously on”, quite aside from the visuals (the clips, and the transitions between them which look like nothing from Trek history, except possibly the “next time on” from the TNG era), there’s the “why?” I’m guessing somebody (showrunners or network execs providing notes) realized: “We’ve been coyly alluding to Pike’s experience on Talos three years earlier, but there’s a big segment of the audience who’ve never seen ‘The Cage’ — we’ve been trying to expand our viewership, remember? — and some of them won’t even register the allusions. Without some extra up-front attention to ‘before’ they’re not going to get the resonance of ‘after’.”
I’m curious how the other forums I follow (Trekmovie.com, etc.) perceive this (with appropriate discounting of the ad-nauseum naysayers, of course).
The “previously on Star Trek” opening was phenomenal. I was concerned that either we were going to get some kind of information dump scene in which Spock or Pike would relate the story of how they came to Talos IV and what happened there. Whoever decided to just show the “previously …” clips instead and trusted the we, the audience, could make the leap deserves major kudos. It doesn’t hurt that Anson Mount looks (and even sounds) an awful lot like Jeffrey Hunter.
I have to disagree with our esteemed reviewer about Melissa George as Vina. I thought she was phenomenal – particularly in the scene with Pike, in which we see that she knows that “her” Pike at the end of “The Cage” is illusory. Her sadness is palpable. Also, Anson Mount’s reaction to seeing Vina is the stuff Emmys would be made of if they didn’t ignore Sci-fi. I have to say, I think that it was also shrewd of the producers to keep Vina out of the previews for this one. Even with the “previously …,” I was genuinely stunned to see her walk up to the shuttle.
I initially thought it was awfully CONVEEEENIENT that the price the Talosians demanded for helping Spock was to reveal the dark secret that Burnham was holding. Then I realized that the Talosians were basically still the creepy psychic voyeur bastards they were in “The Cage.” In fact, it makes me wonder what ever happened to all the other cosmic critters they lured in after Pike left …
Ethan Peck definitely impressed me as Spock. Casting is a high point of the show in general. There were a couple moments in which Peck nailed the air of superiority that Nimoy pulled off so well in the Original Series (the crack about “greater minds than yours …” to Burnham in particular). I also liked the fact that Peck had the same sort of economy of movement that Nimoy had.
The stuff with Tyler was good enough, I guess. It feels a little too much like they’re setting him up for the Section 31 spinoff. I also feel like having Georgiou constantly boasting about all the races she’s annihilated is going to get real old, real fast. Also, I hope that the Mirror Universe Talosians just made it LOOK like she annihilated them.
In general, though, this one is definitely in my top two for this season (“New Eden” is still tops, but that might change on a rewatch).
Showing scenes from “The Cage” IMHO was also a big middle finger to all the rampant, erroneous speculation on what chards of intellectual property Disco is and isn’t allowed to use because CBS, Paramount, JJ, bs, bs, bs.
ALL OF IT! Star Trek: Discovery is now screening original series footage. Don’t EVEN tell me they HAD to change the uniforms or the Enterprise or they can or can’t use characters because of an ownership problem.
@1: “…like, WHUHHH?…”
Seriously? I thought you were being sarcastic at first but then you kept going on and on with the point you were trying to make. Like @2 and @@.-@ mentioned as well, this is FICTION, and the average viewing audience member gets that recastings occur all the time and production looks change from series to series that depict the same fictional events especially productions that occur 50 YEARS LATER! To give a further example related to Star Trek, is it hard for you to process or think the average audience member would have a hard time reconciling that Saavik in Star Trek III is now played by a different actress than Star Trek II. Should the producers re-do the scenes from Star Trek II with the new actress so it’s less incongruous for people? No, because most people will just go with it and understand it was a real-world necessity.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the use of “The Cage” footage and the dissolve to the new Pike although the fancy transitions of scene to scene and the music employed was rather corny. I loved the episode overall. I remembered how Rick Berman tried to justify the series finale on ST: Enterprise, “These Are The Voyages”, as a valentine to Star Trek fans. We all know how that turned out. No, fellow Trek fans, “If Memory Serves” is the real valentine to us all. And thank you for that!
I did forget to mention in the review how awesome it was to have the Laugh-In callback (a show that was contemporary with the original Star Trek) with the illusory Burnham saying, “Say goodbye, Spock,” and the illustory Spock saying, “Goodbye, Spock” before they disappeared.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5. Star Trek is better when the past isn’t a crutch. Don’t get me wrong, I love the occasional acknowledgment of the past, like McCoy’s wonderful cameo in TNG. But the franchise has had a bad habit of looking inward for stories, again and again, sometimes to an absurd degree, making this galaxy feel quite small.
Hopefully, the discovery at the end of the journey this season isn’t something familiar. Please don’t be the Borg, please don’t be the Borg, please don’t be the Borg…
@13 – I’m hoping it’s not the Borg either because they assimilate, not destroy. And also, the Borg have been done to death – thank Voyager for that.
As others have alluded to, maybe it does tie into the Temporal Cold War storyline from Enterprise. I understand it wasn’t a very successful arc on that series but maybe that’s something Discovery can rectify. Like maybe we’ll finally get an answer on who Future Guy is. Scott Bakula appearance anyone?
Uhura didn’t come back from the dead in The Changeling. She was mindwiped. Scotty came back from the dead.
I am patiently waiting to find out who framed Spock.
@15/kkozoriz: Technically true, yes, but having your entire memory erased and having to relearn it all from scratch should logically be a far more drastic and traumatic thing to go through than just having your heart stop for a short time before being restarted. Keith’s point is that the episode glossed over what should have been a very difficult aftermath for Uhura. It’s a pretty good analogy for what happened to Spock — he got his memories back after his regeneration, but they were somewhat scrambled by the melds and there was a lot that he had to relearn, as we saw in TVH. I’ve always thought it was a bit simplistic of the franchise to treat post-Genesis Spock as the exact same person as pre-Genesis Spock. He’s basically a clone with an imperfect copy of the original’s memories. So he shouldn’t be quite the same. It seems that’s the approach DSC is taking with Culber.
@17 – I don’t disagree Christopher. I was just pointing out that the way it was written, it appears that KRAD is confusing what happened to the two characters.
One thing I don’t understand is why Spock feels that the Talosians would be able to help him. There’s no indication that they can do anything except create illusions in his mind. At best, they’d be able to convince him that he was cured.
I agree with those that aren’t fond of the recasting of the Talosians to burly men as opposed to frail women. There was no reason not to keep it as it was.
@14. I agree Voyager used the Borg too much, and yet they still managed to show up in the other prequel series, Enterprise. I’m not sure the folks making Discovery have more restraint than their predecessors. We shall see.
As someone above said, I hope the Borg are not the ones creating the squid probes and infecting Airiam.
I also hope that my guess as to the identity of the Red Angel (The crippled Captain Pike in some kind of time-hopping mobility suit) is wrong. Am I wrong, by the way, in hearing Spock at one point identify the Red Angel as a male? He refers to the Angel as “it” later on, but also identifies it as human.
Also, I wanted to say I REALLY was impressed with Wilson Cruz in this episode. His performance as Culber was heartbreaking.
@19/Rosco: I often see complaints about ENT using the Borg, but IMHO the ire should be directed at First Contact (1996) for littering Earth with the Queen’s chrono-sphere instead of atomizing it in orbit or collecting the debris before returning to the future.
For anyone who has forgotten 2×23 “Regeneration” (Memory Alpha entry), these particular Borg were discovered by a human science expedition in the Arctic — which is a different premise than making the galaxy seem small by sending NX-01 fly to Qo’noS in the first episode, or encountering Ferengi soon thereafter. Now, you might reasonably criticize the story for “how did it take a century for Earth’s scientific community to notice the wreckage?” or “why did a planet-bound expedition have a warp-capable ship for the Borg to steal and enhance?” or “why does the script resort to the usual Borg tropes established in STFC and VGR?”
(Vis-a-vis litter-as-story-seed, I am reminded of the Robotman newspaper comic strip, which in the early ’90s ran a Terminator 2-inspired parody storyline. The penultimate panel is the T-800 saying: “Now I must destroy my future technology so there won’t be any more sequels,” and the final panel is a scientist looking at the sidewalk: “What an interesting lug nut.”)
@19 Given they’ve already done the other two played out Trek tropes (Time Travel and the Mirror Universe), not to mention the antithetical Section 31, I don’t think anybody can bank on their restraint. I think we should be more amazed they haven’t already done the Borg.
@21. First Contact led us to believe the Borg sphere was completely destroyed, because I’m sure in the minds of the production team it was when they were making the movie. So, I think it’s really the fault of Enterprise for lying down and making canon angels in the wreckage, so to speak.
It’s sort of like the setup for Alien 3. It makes very little sense for the egg to be there on the ship, because we know the Queen broke away from her egg sac in the previous movie and we know from the first movie what a stickler Ripley is for quarantine procedures, but they had to keep the story going somehow. Different production, different priorities.
@22. Indeed.
@12: Was that, indeed, a Laugh-In reference? I was put in mind of Gracie Allen.
Incidentally, there’s another interesting point with regard to the old canon: a significant element in the plot of this season, first referenced in the previous season, harks back to a single line of dialogue from Star Trek: The Animated Series–Spock saying that his mother had been quite fond of Lewis Carroll in “Once Upon a Planet”. (Perhaps you mentioned this where it first came up, concerning “Context is for Kings,” I will have to go back and look.)
That’s quite a change for a series that at one point Roddenberry himself disavowed from the canon (though in recent years it was readopted).
Oh, and another interesting thing: If you watch “The Cage,” you’ll notice that the lasers everyone is using in lieu of phasers have a an interesting design similarity to the phasers from Discovery–the rotating nozzle with the three different lenses. The Discovery phasers feel much like an intermediate step between those and the single-nozzle phasers of TOS.
@24/Robotech_Master: It’s commonly believed today that “Say goodnight, Gracie” / “Goodnight, Gracie” was the standard sign-off for Burns and Allen, but in fact, Gracie really just said “Goodnight.” But people tend to confuse it with the Laugh-In signoff where Dan Rowan’s “Say goodnight, Dick” would be met with Dick Martin’s “Goodnight, Dick.” Apparently Groucho and Chico Marx had done the bit previously in a radio sketch.
As I mentioned in an earlier episode’s review thread, “Roddenberry himself” had no real authority over the series at the time he issued the infamous “disavowal” of the animated series, since he’d been eased back to a consulting position due to his declining health and increasingly poor judgment. The shows never honored the “ban,” with both TNG and DS9 referencing elements from the animated series while it was supposedly off-limits. The restriction only really applied to the tie-in literature, because Roddenberry’s aide Richard Arnold (a control freak with very restrictive ideas on what should be allowed to count as “real” Star Trek) had approval over the tie-ins at the time.
@24 Of course, the association of the “Say Goodnight” gag with Burns and Allen is an example of the Mandela Effect. They NEVER did the gag on the show, yet the public has this shared association of it. It is indeed, as KRAD said, a Laugh-In reference, even if the writers thought they were referencing Burns and Allen.
See the myth explained here: http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2012/10/22/did-gracie-allen-ever-actually-say-goodnight-gracie/
Worth noting that Data too fell prey to the “Say Goodnight” gag in an early episode of TNG… I think the one with Joe Piscopo. And, ahem, if memory serves, he attributed the gag to Burns and Allen too. Hey, even androids make mistakes.
Once again the acting from the core crew is phenomenal- Rapp’s emotions come through brilliantly and Wilson Cruz’s body language informs so much about the character. I agree with you on the fight choreography- it sold you that he was rage and anger but no discipline. The emotional awareness of the writing and acting is so effective.
I’d also like to give credit to the writers who interjected some humor into the show. Saru’s comment about starfleet regulation not covering the situation and Burnham asking if Spock thinks the beard works we’re just a minute of emotional levity to keep the episode buoyant. The first few episodes were so incredible but weighty that I was worried this season would exhaust the fans, but the last two weeks have been a nice change of pace.
No mention of how cute baby Spock was? His distress was affecting.
Guess we have to wait till next week to see whether the 28th century hostiles which corrupted her show up. Hopefully it’s not the Borg. Too obvious, too overdone. Airiam may overcome her corruption, since the enemies use a 1970s programming language (“SQL injections”), but she’s not human (or formerly human even, I guess? we know nothing about her so far), so she’s likely out as a Red Angel suspect. People keep guessing Picard, Pike, Archer… Is it not clear that it’s a female figure?
The four admirals line up well with Spock’s vision of the destruction of the Four Founding Worlds of the Federation.
Lots of nostalgia in this episode, but not sure it added much to what we already knew about Pike’s fate, other than contextualizing it in Discovery’s timeline. Not even sure why the Talosians were necessary, or what exactly they did to heal Spock’s sense of time. Wouldn’t a mind-meld have worked well enough?
While the original The Cage (and Menagerie) made cursory mention of the ethical concerns about having Vina stay with the Talosians, shouldn’t Burnham have brought up something of the same nature: that Vina is essentially a slave to the Talosians? In fact, in the original episode Vina and Pike are treated the same way slave owners treated African slaves: as breeding stock. It’s not even glossed over quickly here.
Which brings up a problem that this new Star Trek universe has when it comes into too much contact with the original series at times. In the Sixties, the show had space men who couldn’t cure the common cold. You could take it for granted that Starfleet in that universe couldn’t repair Vina. But we have a cyborg crew member on the bridge of the Discovery every week. This Federation clearly has the wherewithal to give Vina a full and healthy life amongst other humans. Is there really any reason she would have been left behind in this universe? This only points up how absurd it will be if Pike ends up in a chair with a light that can only blink ‘yes’ or ‘no’. We have holograms and we don’t use reel-to-reel tape to program computers anymore, but in the original series they did. Imagine how many billions of feet of magnetic tape a typical Starbase used to go through!
The Orville does have an advantage here of just jettisoning the anachronisms that Star Trek had to carry around. In particular, I was reminded again this week when the shuttle cloaked in enemy space. The only reason the Federation didn’t have cloaking devices was that Roddenberry just didn’t think the good guys should be sneaking around. Although I guess Discovery is getting around this with “Section 31” handwaving.
That’s the big secret that Burnham has been keeping? And Spock is still hanging onto it after all this time? It appears that they’re just rehashing Yesteryear (and the 2009 reboot). Spock faces taunts for being half human. In Yesteryear, we see him choose the Vulcan way by allowing his pet to die. Been there, done that. Especially since we really haven’t seen any sort of closeness between the two of them as children. Why should Spock care what she thinks of him? Sorry, it just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a thing as it’s been made out to be. TAS did in 22 minutes what it’s taken half a season to get to on Discovery.
I liked the episode…. appreciate the review, was quite surprised by the TOS start and thought I accidentally started a TOS episode for a quick sec
@3. AndrewWillett – I agree on your comments regarding Ariam – To give an example, if this was the 2nd season of TNG, and something possessed Data it would be more meaningful because the viewers already felt they knew Data – Discovery lacks or is rather too slow at character development for the secondary bridge officers
Quick cameo of 12 Monkey’s evil Olivia as the psychiatrist, wonder is she’ll be back since Spock didn’t really kill her, if she is I am sure she will be quite evil here as well
Not sure if this was mentioned but the derogatory terms Michael used against Spock were taken from TOS – What Are Little Girls Made Of? , when Kirk was being involuntarily cloned by Korby, he kept repeating calling Spock a half breed so that the clone would repeat it and alert Spock that something was wrong
“Why should Spock care what she thinks of him?“
Well, it’s one thing what ones fellow students and the local bullies say about you. It’s a completely different thing when a family member, your sister, someone you care for, says it. That cuts to the bone. Even if you don’t want it too. Family knows how to hurt you the most.
And I haven’t seen a lot mentioned on it, but I liked the end with the dueling transporter beams, and how they resolved that issue. Sure it may have been a tad convienient for Leland to notice after going to warp, but it was still cool.
First accurate depiction of a black hole on Star Trek and it’s an illusion…
First of all a big thanks to KRAD, and all you great commenters. I’ve watched Discovery from episode one to now in just the last two weeks. It’s been quite a roller coaster, but reading these reviews and responses between episodes has helped immensely in retaining and understanding the overarching stories and how they connect to Trek at large (parts of which I’ve never seen, and the rest, well it’s been a while!)
Discovery isn’t a perfect show but I’ve really fallen for its characters and the feel of its universe. So I’m excited to comment on this episode in real time now!
As a primer I watched The Cage last night for the first time since I was very very young, and so seeing the “previously on” segment using clips from The Cage was comfortable and brought me a lot of joy. The transition from Hunter to Mount was shockingly natural and fluid.
I loved how Talos was updated, and using the same sound effects for the singing plants was FANTASTIC. I agree though with those who aren’t too fond of the Talosian re-design. I think they could have been cleaned up and updated without such a drastic change made. I think the main point of bother for me was how their noses and chins and mouths were all mired under prosthetics. It almost made them look more fake than the 66 versions!
The only other main criticism I have is the flow of the revelations on Talos, why exactly Spock needed them, and when they actually repaired his mind were less than clear. They show Burnham inside, she sees the memories of the angel and the psych ward and then he’s just better right then? Also I would have liked to see Pike return to Talos himself, come face to face with his former captors. At the end of The Cage, they let him go in the most passive aggressive asshole-ish way and he leaves respectfully, but you can tell he still harbors deep resentment. I wish this was explored, but his reconnection with Vina was really touching.
Otherwise though the rest was all highlights: Culber’s struggles, the fight with Tyler and how Saru handles it, Tyler in general was good this week, Michael dissing Spock’s beard, the terrifying visions of technological invasion shown by the angel.
Oh and one last thing, someone upthread was wondering, and Spock actually refers to the Red Angel specifically as “her” at one point in this episode.
You know, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps Michael really will be the Red Angel (after all, Michael is the name of one of the archangels) and the season might end with all her Red Angel activity retconning her life as Spock’s sister out of existence. Given that it’s been mentioned that Section 31 guy was responsible for her parents’ death, perhaps she changes things so that her parents don’t die after all, and so there’s no reason for her to ever have lived with Spock. She retains her own memories of events when she comes back to the present-day, and has to reconcile them with a universe in which things happened entirely differently for her. This would also explain why nobody associated with Spock ever mentions he has a sister.
I kind of hope Discovery doesn’t go that route, though. Seems to have a cheap element of Bobby-Ewing-in-the-shower to it…
On Twitter, Scott Gamzon, the editor of the episode, discussed the putting together of the “previously on…” bit, which was the brainchild of executive producer Alex Kurtzman, and executed by Gamzon and his assistant (who had to track down the people in the footage who were still alive and get permission to use their likenesses)……
Check it out:
https://twitter.com/ScottGamzon/status/1104114590000996352
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@Robotech – I really hope Michael is not the Red Angel and I really hope they do not write her out of existence in the prime timeline. I would feel very dissatisfied with and ending that wiped our protagonist main character that we really get to know over the series out of existence….. I do think its plausible that in order to save the universe, Spock and Michael have to do something that somewhat justifies their mentioning. Heck, Sybok is never mentioned before TFF (at least not that I recall) and he hasnt been mentioned in Disco so I really hope they do something positive for the viewers. If Michael becomes the red angel that also indicates season 2 will be the last which would also be disappointing.
@krad. Thanks again for the review and thanks for the link to the twitter feed. Its nice to see all the positive comments.
@1 and others: If it helps, I sometimes envision the original episodes as reenactments based on the historical documents…
@38 jmsnyc I’m reminded of the dreadfully disappointing ending of the first season of the Witchblade television series in 2001: facing defeat after immense sacrifices, Sarah Pezzini desperately taps the power of her gauntlet to reverse time. The series restarted in the second season with none of the first season having happened.
@38. jmsync: It’s already been renewed for a 3rd season, so it’s not ending.
There’s more changes coming to Prime-time given the nature of the time manipulation going on, chief among them the Angel saving Burnham’s life, but not sure they will write Michael out yet.
Maybe we should start a Deadpool on who the Angel really is…
I’ll even throw in Amanda this week. Odds: 1/3
For story reasons, and given how small this universe feels sometimes, (plus throw in the conventions of a mystery) it’s likely someone we’ve already met. Although they could still pull something completely different out of a hat.
@33 – “Well, it’s one thing what ones fellow students and the local bullies say about you. It’s a completely different thing when a family member, your sister, someone you care for, says it. That cuts to the bone. Even if you don’t want it too.”
Bu what we’ve seen of their childhood relationship doesn’t show them as being particularly close. It’s like they save up the good parts just for this episode. It would have worked better for me if the close relationship had been established much earlier, making their break all the more puzzling and heartbreaking.
@34 – But why create the illusion of a black hole, particularly in a system only two lightyears from Starbase 11. I’s not as if they wouldn’t be aware of one existing there . Why not just cloak the planet and make it look as if there’s not actually a planet there unless the Talosians want someone to find them?
And now we know that the file that Mendez shows to Kirk is a fake. He tells him that the Enterprise was the only “Earth” ship to have visited the planet and yet we now know that two other ships and a shuttle have been there before as well. Maybe there never was a Commodore named Mendez at all. Maybe Pike wasn’t actually at Starbase 11 and the Talosians had the Enterprise kidnap him from another planet but the crew of the Enterprise only thought they were on Starbase 11. But then we’ve got the bit with Spock altering the computer (and assaulting the technician) so it seems like they really were at the base.
Also, we now know that the range of a shuttle is less than two lightyears, Makes you wonder why Kirk rgought it could have reached multiple systems in The Galileo Seven. They all must have been very, very close to each other. But if they were that close the the Murisaki micro-quasar (a real thing although the one in the show is fake) then any planets would have been sterilized when the black hole formed. Then again, science was never Trek’s strong point.
@38 @41 DSC will keep going, with rotating in new showrunners and soft reboots to try and find something that works, until CBS Access (or whatever it is called) has enough content to stand on its own. Right now, without STD, their streaming service is dead in the water. DSC doesn’t have to be good, it just has to BE for now. Really, rotating showrunners and soft reboots is the only sign we can expect that it is in trouble. It is kinda like Agents of SHIELD in that regard (in in reverse), no matter how dire that got it was cancellation proof for a long time too because Disney needed an MCU reminder on regular tv.
@42. kkozoriz: “But why create the illusion of a black hole, particularly in a system only two lightyears from Starbase 11.”
Because Starfleet has sloppy astrophysicists?
Really, just because they thought it would look cool. It could have been disguised as a gas giant, for example, with no landing surface. But then no surprise threat that Burnham has to react to. She knows, and the database tells her there’s a planet there that the Enterprise has already visited. And yet…
Another part of the script that’s nagging at me: Spock is up walking and talking after his sister sees his visions. Set aside that if they imbalanced Spock it could lead to same for her. Maybe she’s made of hardier stuff. But he appears cured even before she shares her memory of their childhood spat, when she has to provide “payment,” after a warning from Vina, to the creepy emotion vampires. Nevermind that Spock had the same memory and it didn’t anchor him in time.
I like this episode more than Saru’s homegoing episode, which one had even more logic holes. But increasingly, I have doubts they will climax to a satisfying ending. I truly hope they’ve seeded enough about the Angel to make sense and not end up with a hollow-feeling.
they can’t go past spock and the other guy, no new stories, just the same shit all over again.
44.
<I>Spock is up walking and talking after his sister sees his visions. Set aside that if they imbalanced Spock it could lead to same for her.</I>
Firstly, it’s implied that the Talosians were doing other things to help Spock manage his memories of the vision (and may have been screening Burnham from their most harmful effects), and secondly, she didn’t have a traumatic encounter with the Red Angel as a child.
@46: Implied is a problem. It’s not show, it’s not tell. She experiences his memory, she’s in his memory, reaching up to the Angel. It’s close enough.
The Talosians are illusion generators. How that heals psychic wounds is certainly not explained. They don’t even know how to heal a human body, according to Vina. Brain surgery is even less likely. We posit the galaxy’s best psychotherapists, but they’re just sappers.
@47/Sunspear: The Talosians are telepaths. Generating illusions is one thing they can do with their telepathy. Another is communicating. In the pilot version, there’s a scene where they use their powers to rifle through the Enterprise‘s data banks, implying some kind of telekinetic ability. And the whole reason General Order 7 exists is the fear that they could use their telepathy to control people’s minds. So clearly their powers are not limited to generating illusions.
@krad @clb
Here’s a Twitter thread about this episode for you.
SQL injection
@48. CLB: How does any of that heal Spock? And why is it better than a mind-meld from a Vulcan physician? Other than nostalgic plot reasons, that is. They give the illusion of health, as Vina says, which somehow… makes people feel better?
They are not healers. Even Pike’s final fate never suggests he gets better. He’s still in his Dalek chair, imagining a vibrant self with Vina. A shared delusion, strong enough to be projected on a viewscreen even.
@50/Sunspear: “How does any of that heal Spock?”
My point is that, given that the Talosians possess multiple psionic abilities, it follows that they could possess others that we haven’t seen. Look at the big picture instead of the individual pieces: the takeaway from “The Cage” and “The Menagerie” is that the Talosians are one of the most powerful telepathic races in the galaxy, which is why they need to be quarantined on pain of death. Therefore, it makes no sense to assume they aren’t capable of fixing Spock’s problem.
And the reason they couldn’t fix Vina is because her injuries were physical. Spock’s problem is mental, so it’s right up their alley.
Seeing as the Talosians were in the pilot episode, we have no idea how many other telepathic races are out there in the Trek universe. Even Vulcan mental abilities didn’t sow up until Dagger of the Mind. For all we know, we were expected to believe that the Talosians were quarantined because they were the first such race encountered by Earth ships. The whole idea of telepathy and mental illusion powers could have been enough on their own for Starfleet (or UESPA) to come up with General Order 7.
I really liked this episode, straight from the unexpected blast from the past.
The Talosians were less approachable and creepier to me this time around. They seemed much colder.
I disagree about Vina. The old Vina was kind of cocky. This new one is wary and beat down and sad, just as one would expect.
It’s rather amazing how Peck has nailed the role. I liked Quinto (minus the emo-Spock way he was written) but Peck knocks it out of the park. At times, you’re almost fooled into thinking it’s a younger Nimoy.
It’s silly that as a logical, rational adult, and doubly so after Burnham explains her motivation, that Spock is still pissy about it. So much for logic.
I’m bored with Section 31 and double that with Georgiou’s obligatory fighting scene. I like her character though, but am puzzled that Section 31 doesn’t see right through her. Leland did not, but I bet he understands now.
I never thought that I’d say this, but I’d be all over a reboot of the Pike-era Enterprise with Pike and Spock on it. They were that good.
Other things. Culber. Unexpected but more what one would expect of someone who went through what he did. Evidently he carries some resentment over Stamets having been a workaholic. Because TV, at some point they’ll fall in love again, but I’d rather they didn’t. Just to be more realistic.
Airiam. Oh dear lord, wrap up this possession and Red Angel bit. I don’t know who the Red Angel is but it looks female. Could it be Michael? That would fit the series’ emphasis on her. Would she sacrifice young Michael to her intended fate so that the Federation planets/galaxy are saved?
Or is it some other foe?
This season is light years better than S1 (although I LOVED Lorca and it would be hilarious if Prime Universe Lorca came back and was given the captaincy after Pike leaves). But I wish Pike would stay, but he can’t.
I’m not so sure though, that it’s a good sign that the series really picked up with Mount and Peck arriving. Because they can’t stay.
I miss old Saru. This one is a bit dangerous. He may be trouble yet.
Okay, now I can gush.
The previews for this one had me sold, but boy does this one deliver. So much happens, I almost can’t believe this was one episode; but it all holds together so well. I feel like my almost 30 years of Trek fandom was just for this episode, going back to where it all began, on Talos IV.
We finally get to hear from Spock in his own words, and during none of the time Ethan Peck was on screen did the back of my mind go, Oh, it’s another actor playing Spock, which is technically true, but all I felt was yes, this is Spock. Peck nailed it so well. I really enjoyed watching Spock and Burnham.
Speaking of Burnham, wow does she really fuck up with Spock. Sadly it’s the sort of thing you do as a dumbshit kid, thinking you’re protecting or helping someone by hurting them deeply; now that I think about it, it’s also what dumbshit adults do to family members: saying really hurtful things to family members “for their own good.”
I’m glad Michael recognizes cutting Spock off was a dumbshit thing to do, as that kind of realization is not automatic as one transitions from youth to adulthood.
I think Spock held on to what happened between him and Michael into adulthood as an example, or rather the example, of needing to embrace logic over emotion. Spock realized what Michael was trying to do years ago, but it still hurt like hell, so Spock retreated into his Vulcan heritage because of the dumbshit rationale and human emotions that led his older sister, whom he clearly adored, to effectively abandon him…
I didn’t think we’d actually see Anson Mount’s Pike confront what happened to Pike on Talos IV, but we do, and man does Mount sell it. My eyes went wide with shock seeing Vina at the shuttle on Talos, and then again when she appears to Pike in his ready room. I think Melissa George put a decent spin on the legendary character. But I agree with you, krad; I was left kind of wanting.
Finally, my heart breaks for Hugh Culber. I hope after his confrontation with Tyler, Hugh can find some measure of peace. I’m glad Saru let Culber and Tyler hash this out, and that Pike let the matter drop, at least just this once. Though I do appreciate they didn’t make Culber instantly better and back to normal, an unfortunate Trek trope I’m glad this group of writers have abandonded.
I’m a very happy nerd and Trek fan.
@Jmsync #32 Interesting that you made an analogy to Data, since in fact he WAS possessed during season 2 of TNG!!
@55
They should really have called that episode “24th Century Schizoid Man” :)
@CLB: “it follows that they could possess others that we haven’t seen” ” it makes no sense to assume they aren’t capable of fixing Spock’s problem”
Exactly. We haven’t seen. We are assuming. It’s not shown.
I wonder, even with the old timey recap at the beginning, if any of this works for a viewer who hasn’t seen the original series. I guess they can just roll with it and assume things. But that’s really just a weak script. It literally adds nothing new to what we already know.
It does tweak a few things. There’s no mention of a death penalty. Maybe that will get quietly dropped or the show will go back to Talos IV for more shenanigans to justify such a singular (Over-dramatic) order.
Vina is no longer rebuilt by the buttheads. It’s simply how they found her.
I’ve never truly wrapped my brain around the idea that an illusion can make you feel better if you’re physically impaired. Vina and Pike cannot be together at the end of “The Menagerie.” I suppose they can mindfuck and that may be enough. We’re headed toward virtual sex in our time, so why not. But Pike is still immobile in a box and she’s physically wrecked.
This was a well constructed nostalgia trip. It tickles the brain of long-time fans just the right way. It’s even satisfying on that level. But it adds little besides ticking a box on the way to TOS. At this point, I’m not even sure why Spock’s mind gets unstuck in time. Burnham sees the visions… we see the visions and, uh, we’re ok. Is a logically constructed mind more vulnerable than an emotional one? That’s not logical. It’s about as illogical as Spock carrying a decades-long grudge over Burnham’s “Bad dog! Stay!” trick.
Btw: Are you finally watching there live? Or just arguing from reviews and other secondary sources? If you’re not watching, no use responding to you anymore.
We know the Red Angel is a female. We know the El Aurian race has unusually long life spans. We know Whoopi Goldberg likes this show. Therefore the Red Angel is Guinan.
This was a very good episode, the “previously on” was a great touch, and the shift from the last Hunter shot to the first Pike shot in the episode was beautiful. I love the Talosian design (I didn’t find them “burly”), and how Talos IV looked; Vina was very well portrayed by Melissa George. Peck as Spock is great, I’m glad he’s in the show. His smile at Pike at the end was very nice. Kid Spock is very good, too, although I wasn’t very convinced by the reason Spock and Michael are estranged.
Culber’s plight is something they should have seen coming, how is he not undergoing psychotherapy of some kind? I hope we see more of how he deals with his return, and with having Tyler around. Also, how Tyler deals with this.
BTW, what the hell is up with S31 crewmembers wearing sleeveless uniforms? A bit of old mirror universe fashion? It looks stupid.
@krad: One “assumes” it’s Airiam? They couldn’t be more obvious, practically having her wink at the camera! :)
I hope to be wrong, but the writers have set up a perfect way to reconcile Discovery’s liberties with canon: in the “original” timeline, there was no red angel, Burnham died, the Klingon war was avoided (via Georgiou having a non-emotionally unstable first officer at the binary stars), Mirror!Lorca got actual psicological treatment instead of being immediately sent on a ship (and maybe never regained command), the spore drive was not invented (as the idea was found to be too far-fetched and there was no pressing matters), Sarek didn’t advocate genocide, Mudd didn’t become a murderer (not being captured by the Klingons), and the Federation had actually been in peace for a hundred years by TOS.
@60/Oirad: Star Trek has retconned its own continuity countless times over the decades without ever needing to use alternate timelines as an excuse. It’s just that fandom today has become dysfunctionally literal-minded and forgotten how to cope with the fact that fiction isn’t real and can therefore change its continuity and reality purely because it serves the story.
@ChristopherLBennett: I think I have not been clear. I know Star Trek has never been fully consistent with itself, and probably it is not even desiderable that it is (there are always silly/poorly thought/problematic elements that is much easier to retcon than to try to justify). I’m just saying that if the writers want (or have wanted, as I guess the season has all been filmed at this point) then the Red Angel plot provides a convenient excuse for all these differences. (And, to say it again, I really hope this is not the case.)
@62/Oirad: That’s my point. Fans always want to believe that the writers intend to split off a parallel timeline, and that’s not what the writers actually intend to do. We went through this exact same nonsense back when Enterprise was on.
The problem is, people misunderstand what’s important in a story. They fixate on superficial differences in presentation and design as evidence of discontinuity, but what really matters in stories are plot and character and events. In every way that matters, DSC’s producers are clearly committed to connecting to established TOS continuity as much as possible, not disconnecting from it. They very, very much want to tell stories that are part of the same reality as TOS, even if their version of that reality looks different (which is no more a continuity change than recasting an actor or getting a new artist on a comic book series).
Plus, of course, the DSC producers are currently developing a series about Picard decades after TNG. Naturally they want that to be about the version of Picard that we know, to be a direct sequel to TNG as we know it. And since it’s on the same network and from many of the same producers and writers, there will probably be continuity links between the two shows, even though they take place a century and a half apart. All the more reason to conclude that the last thing the producers want is to split DSC off into a separate timeline.
@61 – “Star Trek has retconned its own continuity countless times over the decades without ever needing to use alternate timelines as an excuse. It’s just that fandom today has become dysfunctionally literal-minded and forgotten how to cope with the fact that fiction isn’t real and can therefore change its continuity and reality purely because it serves the story.”
Excuse me but aren’t you the same person that keeps insisting that TNG and later series got the Prime Directive wrong?
Yes, TPTB are perfectly free to change continuity and retcon previous stories. And, once it’s released into the wild, the fans are just as free to accept or reject those retcons. Or is it better that when watching TOS, we decide that Spock is nowhere near as smart we we used to believe about things like invisibility screens and time travel, both of which we have seen in abundance in the prequels. Or should we load our digital copies of TOS and remove the parts that have been retconned in order for them to make sense when viewed as a single narrative?
Or, can we just accept both parts are true and deal with it in whatever way we see fit? It’s not as if fans are the ones that created alternate Trek realities. TNG even did a whole episode that had thousands of them.
(64)
Exactly. Fans are prone to emulate the things they enjoy. So if said fans enjoy dressing up as their favorite characters, quoting lines verbatim, and using Star Trek stories as moral lessons in the real world, then it should come as no surprise that some fans might create alternate or parallel universe theories to explain why some things are different. As recently as the Kelvin movies, Star Trek has done the same in big bold letters, and some have taken that ball and run with it — sometimes to an annoying degree. Because that’s what fans do.
Either way, those theories don’t change the “official” continuity created by CBS and Paramount. That will always be there in all its messy, multiverse glory.
@64. kkozoriz: Nooooooooooo! Don’t trigger him! This will lead to endless wiki citing! ahRRRGH!
But yeah, retconning and changing continuity is textbook definition of Oxymoron. Continuity is a pretend construct defined by corporate interests (producers, marketing departments, etc). It’s a meta-term that doesn’t mean much other than a consensus reality imposed from above and outside the fictional universe.
Within that artificiality we have multiple branching of the story universe. The universe at the end of Kirk Saves the Whales is not the same as the one that existed at the beginning of the movie. The timeline in the current Discovery show is not that of TOS. It’s explicitly said that the Angel has and is trying to change it further. It must be changed for the Federation to survive.
So, plainly. We have seen so many changes over the decades to the original state of the Trek universe that we are not in the starting timeline. We are currently watching one that will branch to align with Kirk’s starting point, closing the loop. This is a many-worlds scenario, a multiverse. Why in a SF setting that is so enormously difficult to grasp is strange.
Applying the word “continuity” to all that is weird. The story is constantly shifting as creatives adapt their vision of that universe. Insisting on a singular continuity, other than in a meta-sense, for marketing purposes, isn’t necessary.
Particularly since what the continuity is is always changing. What’s the canon? Everything produced by those in charge. Paraphrasing Garak and Bashir
“They can’t all be true. Even the retconned?”
“Especially the retconned”
Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of the Trek multiverse, a James R. Kirk flies off into a new adventure. And somehow, the multiverse survives.
Yes, James T. Kirk had a similar adventure as the one we watched starring James R. and somehow the fans managed to figure it out without being told how it all fits.
So this episode really sets up a question for me about timelines. Assuming that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is in continuity, the Sybok question really ought to be addressed.
Given that Spock DOES recognize Sybok and seems to have had some kind of relationship with him, I guess it’s possible that he was out of the picture by the time Michael showed up at Sarek and Amanda’s.
Right now, my in-brain continuity would seem to indicate that Sybok has left sarek’s care (if, indeed, he ever resided with Sarek and Amanda) by the time of “Yesteryear.” Given that Spock seemingly didn’t have his pet during the times we have seen him with Michael on Vulcan, all those events happened after “Yesteryear.”
But who knows? It’s possible Sybok showed up between the time Michael joined Starfleet and when Spock did so. Of course, there’s also the fact that Sybok is never mentioned by ANYONE on Discovery … Or for that matter by Sarek in later episodes and movies …
To quote a well known Doctor Who fan: ‘Continuity? What Continuity?’
Sybok is older than Spock, and not Amanda’s child. It’s perfectly safe to assume that, if he ever lived at Sarek’s house, he’s long gone, and there’s nothing strange about nobody mentioning him.
I’m (predictably) late to the discussion, so in no particular order:
Am I the only one who thinks that Georgiou is too obvious for the Red Angel? Spock would be intimately familiar with Amanda and Michael’s katras, so it’s not them.
Reeeally doubt it’s Borg, not with the telegraphing of Control being a computer/ai.
The cause of the rift between Michael and Spock was a little underwhelming, and his response to it a little disappointing, but fairly consistent with his behaviour towards Sybok.
No, Sybok does not even need to be mentioned in STD. Ever!
Mildly dissatisfied with the Talosians appearance, but meh, unimportant.
Mind-melds/Vulcan telepathy is a very personal and interconnecting experience between participants, Spock’s damage may well have been transferred by such a process and end in two or more damaged individuals. The Talosians are far more adept telepaths and their minds are more alien.
Spock said it himself, he needed a frame of reference, which is what he’d lost from his mind-meld infodump from the R.A. He needed to reset his frame of reference, the same as he needed to reset after doing the same to V’Ger. Note the supreme logic at one end of a transition to a smile after.
@71. Berthulf: It’s not obvious at all. The visual evidence so far doesn’t match a woman of Michelle Yeoh’s slight stature. They could pull a trick, of course. Maybe they used a stand-in all along till they decided who the Angel would be.
The S31 AI may be the future enemy or connected to it. Discovery‘s computing system becoming sentient in the future would be an even more interesting prospect if it’s folded into this season. It could be a battle of the AIs, although that’s not part of later Trek lore, far as I know. They may then pull a Dune and outlaw AIs, or attempt to classify them into oblivion, like with the MU.
I really hope that the secret behind Section 31 is not that it’s run by an AI. That takes away the responsibility from humans. “See, it’s all because of that evil computer”
Of course, it would be a very obvious way of showing why Kirk hated computers so much that he tried to kill them each time he met an intelligent one.
@71 – Berthulf: Why do you call it STD? Do you call TNG STNG or VOY STV?
@74 – Why do you capitalize the G and the U in you rname ? Only joking. I agree and find the STD abbreviation insulting because it sounds like something you need to see a doctor for…..
@75/jmsnyc: I think the insult is the whole reason some people use that initialism.
@71. Berthulf: “No, Sybok does not even need to be mentioned in STD. Ever!” and “Mind-melds/Vulcan telepathy is a very personal and interconnecting experience between participants, Spock’s damage may well have been transferred by such a process and end in two or more damaged individuals.”
I missed this till I read a comment elsewhere, but this is basically Sybok’s whole shtick. “Show me your pain and I’ll release you from it.” Why’s Spock not seeking out his other sibling? Why’s it always about Michael, Michael, Michael!?
@73/kkozoriz: Kirk didn’t hate intelligent computers. He fell in love with an intelligent computer in “Requiem for Methuselah”, and he didn’t try to kill the computer in “Once Upon a Planet”. He only killed computers that enslaved or killed people.
@77/Sunspear: Perhaps Sybok hadn’t taken up that shtick yet.
@77/Sunspear: I doubt that Spock considered Sybok’s fringe beliefs to be legitimate. It would’ve been like seeking out a faith healer.
This was the first episode from either season in which I actually found more that I liked than I disliked.
I suppose it’s appropriate that the episode where we finally “meet” Spock at last — and see him reunited with Pike at last — is a sequel to the very first story that Spock appeared in (at least in production order). It also helps explain why Spock would turn to the Talosians for help with Pike in “The Menagerie” — because they’d helped him before.
I think this episode worked pretty well. I still wish DSC would tell more new stories instead of constantly rehashing old continuity, but this is an example of handling old continuity effectively. Peck is excellent as Spock (even though his vocal delivery is a bit flatter than Nimoy’s), and I think Melissa George did a fine job as Vina, effectively channeling Susan Oliver’s voice and manner. Maybe she was more subdued than Oliver’s Vina, but Oliver’s would’ve been more affected because she was putting on a seductive act — an act that involved pretending to be 18 years old, so naturally she would’ve been more animated, while here we’re seeing her true, mature personality. And she seems to be more at peace now, since she’s a partner to the Talosians instead of their captive, and since she’s had the comfort of an illusory Pike. (Interesting that the episode canonizes that detail which was omitted from the “Menagerie” version, since it repurposed the footage of Vina and the illusory Pike as a depiction of the real Pike reuniting with Vina 13 years later.)
I do wish they’d stuck with the original androgynous, frail appearance of the Talosians. And I do wish the location used for Talos IV hadn’t been so obviously a quarry. I would’ve rather seen a digital matte painting reflecting the crags of the original cycloramas from “The Cage.”
The shipboard stuff was pretty good. It’s nice that they’re not just using Culber’s resurrection as an easy reset button, that his arc is specifically about how he can’t just go back — although it still seems to preclude the show from having a stable, successful gay relationship, so it doesn’t quite fix the metatextual problem caused by his death. And Culber and Tyler fighting it out in the mess hall has the feel of something they would’ve done in TOS, a show made in a time when it was pretty much obligatory to include a fistfight in every episode whether it served a purpose or not. And Saru’s changed perspective helped justify why it was allowed to happen.
I complained that the shipboard and Burnham plots in the previous episode didn’t line up right timewise — Burnham was taking multiple interstellar trips that should’ve taken a number of days at least, while the shipboard plot seemed to cover no more than a day or two. Fortunately, this time it’s the other way around — the stuff on Talos takes no more than a day or two, while the shipboard stuff could easily span a number of days, travel time included. So I can assume that the later Burnham scenes in “Light and Shadows” overlapped with the earlier shipboard scenes here, and that they were shown out of order for dramatic pacing.
“We even get the singing plants that stop singing when you touch them, a lovely callback.”
They botched it, though. “The Cage” made it clear that each leaf was contributing a different tone to the chiming sound, and stilling one leaf only stilled one of the tones; they had to grab 3 or 4 leaves before all the tones were damped. But here, Burnham touched only one leaf and the entire multitonal sound cut off at once, which is fundamentally misunderstanding how it worked. It’s a strange mistake to make.
Speaking of sound effects, the Section 31 ship’s transporter at the end had the “Cage” version of the transporter (or “materializer”) sound effect in its audio mix, perhaps as a subtle (and figurative) clue to the audience that they were beaming up a Talosian illusion.
The sound mix did not need to clue us in into that, it was pretty expectable. :)
@82: Yeah, but my point is that I don’t think they’ve used that particular transporter sound effect anywhere else in the show, so that might’ve been their symbolic reason for using it there.
Having finished Enterprise fairly recently, I think I can safely assume that the Vulcan extremists who had threatened Sarek and Amanda for harboring Spock and Michael are an offshoot of the extreme isolationist Vulcans we’ve seen during the Forge/Awakening/Kir’Shara trilogy. It makes sense that there would still be some conflict taking place within Vulcan society, 100 years later.