This week’s episode picks up right where last week left off, with the crew still gathered in the mess hall to memorialize Emperor Georgiou, but the gathering becomes the subject of several revelations in short order, thus allowing Discovery to finally head to the Verubin Nebula to investigate the origins of the Burn.
We start with the return of Gray to Adria’s headspace. There are several things I like about this particular development. One is that it isn’t being treated like a delusion. Stamets not only takes Adira seriously, but even turns to address the empty area where Adira says Gray is in order to rebuke him for treating Adira poorly. And we’ve seen in DS9’s “Field of Fire” that joined Trill can call up images of past hosts with the Rite of Emergence. Since Adira isn’t Trill, having the Rite happen with a past host they’re emotionally attached to as a side effect is reasonable.
It also makes for interesting storytelling possibilities, like the fact that Gray doesn’t particularly like being a non-corporeal image in Adira’s head and nothing else. It’s to Adria’s credit that they both forgive and understand this, especially since they have their own issues with trying to fit into Discovery’s already-established dynamic. And having Gray around is likely to make Adira even more daring, as we see by their batshit crazy actions at the very end of the episode.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
Also at the memorial, they get more sensor readings from the nebula, including detecting a life form. Given the intense radiation at the heart of the nebula, nobody gets how that’s possible—except Saru. The recording of the Kelpien that they discovered coming from the nebula included markings on the woman’s head, which Saru reveals as indicators that she was pregnant. Saru believes that the child she was carrying survived the Burn and is still in the nebula, waiting for rescue.
And so Discovery pootles over to the Verubin Nebula, and the very problem that Admiral Vance brought up previously comes to fruition. It’s the first Kelpien Saru has encountered since Discovery’s arrival in the 32nd century, and worse it’s a Kelpien who’s been waiting for a rescue for a century. When Discovery first enters the nebula, the ship is buffeted by radiation that chews through the shields, and Saru stays in far longer than is wise before using the spore drive to pop back out where it’s safe. Book saves the day here by offering to take his much smaller ship in to find a spot they can hop to inside the nebula, which he does with a minor case of radiation poisoning that Dr. Pollard is able to fix up when he comes back.
My initial instinct was that this was unfair to Saru, whose ascension to the captaincy was long overdue—but he’s still also new at the job. He’s actually handled himself extremely well thus far, under very trying circumstances, but he’s not perfect, and he definitely loses perspective several times here, with Book, Burnham, and Culber all having to drag him back to his responsibilities. Though, amusingly, Burnham at the very end has to convince him to be less responsible, in a sense. (More on that in a bit.)
We’ve seen this with other captains before. Kirk (“Obsession“), Picard (First Contact, not to mention the entire backstory for the first season of Picard), Sisko (“Take Me Out to the Holosuite“), and Janeway (“Year of Hell“) have all had their moments when they’ve lost perspective and were single-minded to the point of absurdity, and one could argue that Archer pretty much did that from jump in “Broken Bow.”
Discovery can’t stay in the nebula long, but Book’s scouting mission has given them a spot to sit in long enough for a team to beam to the ship and try to rescue the lone Kelpien—whom we eventually learn is named Su’Kal, which means “beloved gift,” and is a name given to a Kelpien child born after a great tragedy. Saru, Burnham, and Culber beam away, leaving Tilly in charge of the ship for the first time.
Saru’s presence on the away team is necessary, as the ship is pretty much one big holodeck designed to raise and educate Su’Kal until a rescue comes, and he’s needed to explicate Kelipien customs and language and mythology and stuff.
But the holodeck is not functioning at 100% efficiency, as many of the programs are glitchy. The program also has altered the appearances of the away team to make Culber Bajoran, Burnham Trill, and Saru human. The reasons for this are not particularly convincing, but it’s nice to see Doug Jones’s actual face (and I suspect Jones himself was grateful to perform in a chunk of an episode without his head being covered in latex, something he’s had rare opportunities to do in his career). These cosmetic changes extend to their uniforms and equipment, so they have no combadges, no radiation medication (which they desperately need, and all three of them start breaking out in epidermal sores), and no tricorders or weapons.
Su’Kal himself is a frighteningly effective character, magnificently played by Bill Irwin. One of the prototypical “oh, that guy” character actors who’s been in everything at some point or other (much like Jones, in fact), Irwin beautifully portrays someone who has been alone with only holograms for company for far too long. His sanity is questionable, his development hasn’t really gotten beyond the pre-teen level despite his years, and he also does not face his fear, which is manifested as a sea monster out of Kelipien mythology. The monster itself is a nice scary bit of CGI, a clever combination of the Kelpiens mixed with the tattered drippiness of their enemies, the Ba’ul.
All the performances in this episode are superb. Jones shows Saru getting overcome by nostalgia, losing himself in the Kelpien lore. Wilson Cruz’s Culber is ever the doctor, trying to fix everyone and everything, and dragging people back to reality. And Sonequa Martin-Green does a particularly good job of pretending to be one of the holographic characters to try to get information out of Su’Kal. Robert Verlaque also does fantastic work as the holographic Kelpien elder, a storyteller who provides the most insights into Su’Kal and holographic world they’re in.
There’s also strong evidence supporting the notion that Su’Kal himself may be responsible for the Burn. One of the things Discovery finds in the nebula is a huge cache of dilithium. This is a game-changer if they can harvest it, though the nebula’s intense radiation is a stumbling block. But at one point, Su’Kal has something like a temper tantrum, and it has an adverse effect on both Discovery and the Veridian, the first indicator as to what, exactly, in the nebula it was that made all the warp cores go boom.
And yes, the Veridian’s there, as that’s the B-plot: with Tilly in charge of the ship holding station outside the nebula until the shields can reconstitute following their trip in to drop the away team off, Osyraa’s ship arrives. This is a baptism of fire for Tilly, and unfortunately, but not surprisingly, she gets burned. She handles herself well in the verbal negotiations with Osyraa, giving as good as she gets, but the minute she lowers shields to use the spore drive to bop into the nebula, Osyraa beams in a boarding party that takes possession first of engineering (and Stamets and, thus, the spore drive) and then the bridge.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when you make an ensign the first officer. There are reasons why making Tilly first officer made sense, but those reasons were all in terms of her being someone who could run the day-to-day of the ship and carry out the captain’s instructions. However, a big way it doesn’t make sense is in a crisis. Tilly was not ready for this, and she loses the ship.
Having said that, Mary Wiseman and Janet Kidder play the conversations between Tilly and Osyraa quite well. Kidder very much did not impress in her first appearance in “The Sanctuary,” but she’s way better here. Her two-sentence pegging of Tilly’s personality is beautifully played, as is Tilly’s unimpressed response, throwing Sigmund Freud in her face.
Once again, Book saves the day, as he leaves the ship as it’s being taken over and heads into the nebula to rescue the away team. To his surprise, he has a stowaway: Adira, who beams down to join the away team with a bunch more radiation medication. Meanwhile, Burnham has to convince Saru to stay behind. After an entire episode where he loses focus, Saru finally gets it back, wanting to return to the ship and his duty as her captain—but Burnham is right that Saru is the only one who can get through to Su’Kal. Culber also remains behind, as he knows what it’s like to be stuck alone in a strange place for far too long.
As soon as Burnham is beamed back by Book (say that ten times fast!), her uniform and equipment are restored, so she can at last take the radiation meds. Unfortunately, by the time they get out of the nebula, they’re just in time to see Discovery and Veridian—which is tethered to the Starfleet ship—disappear via spore drive.
So now we’ve got the head of the Emerald Chain in possession of Discovery, complete with its knowledge of the location of Starfleet’s hidden headquarters, Book and Burnham stuck back at the nebula eating their metaphorical dust, and Saru, Culber, and Adira trapped on decaying, radiation-wracked holodeck with a slightly crazy hundred-year-old pre-adolescent.
Looks like they plan to end the 2020 calendar year with a bang next week…
Keith R.A. DeCandido hopes everyone is having a safe holiday season.
I loved this episode! We got some major advancement in the cause of the Burn and so far those answers haven’t been disappointing (but there goes theories Burnham caused it). It was great seeing Jones out of makeup and playing human. He has a very emotive face so that was wonderful to see. The holographic program had an eery nightmare-like quality to it that was beautifully depicted. In some places it looks like an M.C. Escher drawing and from the movie Labyrinth. Bill Irwin does a fantastic job in his guest role as the child-like and emotionally-stunted Su’Kal. I became a big fan of his from his role in Legion and didn’t even realize it was him underneath all of that makeup. Nice to see more of Book proving his worth and heroism (and Grudge too and her vocalizing). More development in the Adira/Gray saga and an explanation for why Gray went missing, as well as Adira also going all-heroic. Reno shows up for a little bit. Culber is also crucial here and loved his parting with Stamets. And also really enjoyed Tilly taking command and facing off with Osyra who felt much more like a threat than in previous appearances. So now we have all of our heroes split up into three different places and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what happens next episode.
I didn’t realize it was Irwin until I saw his name in the guest list at the end, and I went back to rewatch Su’Kal’s scenes knowing that. He was just amazing. (And yeah, he was superb in Legion.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well, the visuals in the holodeck scenes were gorgeous, and I wish CBS All Access weren’t screwed up somehow these past three weeks so that I can only watch the episodes on my phone. The CBSAA app doesn’t even let me expand the image to full screen. (I sometimes really regret saying no when the people who sold me my first smartphone offered to throw in a tablet for an extra $50. But then, that tablet would be over 6 years old now and probably have the same app incompatibility issues as my old phone.)
This may be the best holodeck episode ever, making extraordinary use of the technology’s potentials and plausibly justifying its malfunctions. It felt almost like a TOS episode, with the crew beaming into a mysteriously created illusory environment, but the super-advanced technology creating it is Federation technology familiar to viewers, so it’s both eerie and grounded at the same time, an intriguing balance. It was also a clever way to give Doug Jones a break from the latex (and perhaps to save time and money on prosthetics as they need to save up for the finale). Though I wonder how a holodeck is able to change the way Saru’s body feels to himself from the inside, in both the configuration of his feet and his visceral reaction to heights. Maybe it’s not just holography but direct neural stimulation to alter the users’ perceptions.
The idea of a person raised in a holodeck his whole life was effectively handled too, and I loved the way Burnham coped with it by pretending to be a teaching program. Martin-Green did a great job going all Reading Rainbow.
The idea that the galaxywide devastation of the Burn was caused by a single scared child with some kind of dilithium-and-subspace-radiation-induced prenatal mutation is a bit convoluted and hard to buy, and also a bit anticlimactic. But at the same time, I like it coming down to a tragic accident and a personal, emotional story more than I would’ve liked it turning out to be some evil scheme by an enemy power.
Come to think of it, the earlier references in sickbay to using “genetic recombination” as a radiation treatment might have been a Chekhov’s Gun. If recombinant therapy were used on a pregnant mother, it might explain how the baby mutated/adapted in the womb.
The bit about the burr on the arm of the captain’s chair was a fascinating touch, finding meaning in something so banal and everyday.
It would be wonderful if somehow Bill Irwin becomes a recurring guest actor on this series. Su’Kal could become like a surrogate son to Saru, the irony of which is Su’Kal being much older than Saru.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone! Looking forward to moving beyond this overall wretched year and next year can only be better!
I agree with @3 CLB- Martin-Green as a hologram was phenomenal in how she “reset” and was trying to get deeper into Sa’Kul’s psyche, but it did leave me a bit confused- how exactly did the holodeck change how the away team physically moved? I get that it created an image overlay so they looked like different species but why does Saru now walk like a human? His skeletal system is still the same isn’t it?Im also not sure I like that the cause of the burn is one person. Cant quite put my finger on it but I don’t love it
And then there’s the b-story. Have we established that the shields drop to spore jump? In the Lorca 160 jump sequence versus the Klingons did we really have shields down the entire time? For that matter after everyone cloaked why did discovery stay in this close proximity to the Emerald Chain? If you can jump to the safe pocket from anywhere, why wouldn’t you move away from the entity that’s a threat to you?
Lastly I feel we’re missing some interaction with Acting Captain Tilly. I get that star fleet has seemingly separated rank and position (chief petty officer O’Brien as chief engineer) but I feel like someone in the bridge crew should have been in conflict with Tilly as in charge. I feel that it would be a natural occurrence instead of everyone just going along with it. Detmer
@5/Mike:”I get that it created an image overlay so they looked like different species but why does Saru now walk like a human?”
As I said, I’m guessing that the holodeck is altering their brains’ perceptions rather than just creating holograms. So Saru is still walking like a Kelpien, but he feels like he’s in a human body.
“For that matter after everyone cloaked why did discovery stay in this close proximity to the Emerald Chain? If you can jump to the safe pocket from anywhere, why wouldn’t you move away from the entity that’s a threat to you?”
This show’s VFX team is terrible with plausibility and common sense. They made the same mistake in that multi-jump sequence you mentioned — the plot said they needed all those jumps to find the cloaked ship, but the VFX had it just sitting in the same place it had been before it cloaked. I find it’s best just to ignore what the visuals show and assume they’re just an imperfect representation of what’s going on (I refuse to believe that turbolifts move through vast open spaces that magically exist inside the ship).
“I feel like someone in the bridge crew should have been in conflict with Tilly as in charge. I feel that it would be a natural occurrence instead of everyone just going along with it.”
I think someone with military experience talked about this in the comments last week, how it’s not unheard of for someone to be assigned to lead people of higher rank. In a situation like that, everyone has to go along with it. After all, it was Captain Saru who assigned Tilly to command the bridge, so the crew are obligated to follow Saru’s order to follow Tilly’s orders. It was clearly defined from the start who would be in charge, so there’s nothing to debate.
Plus there was that whole bit a few weeks ago where they had the whole crew tell Tilly they wanted her to accept the acting first officer job. I agree it might enrich their character development if one or more of the bridge crew did have a problem with it, but it’s already established that they don’t.
As reasons for Starfleet vessels to get taken over, “Because I left an ensign in charge” isn’t the worst. My only rub is why didn’t they immediately jump back to Starfleet headquarters as soon as it was apparent it was Osyraa coming. I doubt her ship would’ve done much better than than Discovery braving the nebula, and they could jump from Starfleet Headquarters to the planet basically at will.
That said, on the grand scale of Starfleet ships being taken over by aliens with bad intentions, this is above the Ferengi taking over the Enterprise-D, but far below the lethal terror of the Srivani, or the sheer impossibility of fighting the Scalosians.
Also, I’m annoyed by the ease by which people are transporting through shields, (stamps cane on the ground) back in my day, shields blocked transporters.
And I know Starfleet doesn’t fire first, but this is a known hostile, and I would’ve put a few photons into her warp core after the microburn knocked everybody out of cloak, while she was off guard.
Overall though, great episode. Loved seeing more of the Kelpien’s culture. It’s interesting that Su’kal’s safe place, the castle is also where he keeps his monster. The Holodeck’s advancing to the point where they grant feedback not just on a tactile level, but also a neurosynaptic level seems to be the ultimate advancement and also explains how Su’kal’s fears can manifest in the form of a holoprogram. Though it seems an odd thing maybe it’s old tech and explains how B’Elanna Torres can feel a holographic baby kick.
Said monster wasn’t a Kelpien mixed with a Ba’ul though, it was a Kelpien mixed with Kelp. The fact that all of the “seams” on the Kelpien skull seemed to open up was a fascinating visual. Almost looked like a demonic flower. At least it didn’t have the dart launchers…which would’ve been useful on the bridge when Osyraa showed up.
@3/ChristopherLBennett
You reminded me of what Sa’kul’s powers remind me of. He’s a freaking Biotic. Just he’s living in a galactic scale biotic amplifier. (Mass Effect for anyone who has no clue what I’m talking about).
Come to think of it, the earlier references in sickbay to using “genetic recombination” as a radiation treatment might have been a Chekhov’s Gun. If recombinant therapy were used on a pregnant mother, it might explain how the baby mutated/adapted in the womb.
In Mass Effect, Biotics are babies whose mothers were exposed to Element Zero/Eezo (the material that alters the apparent mass of an object and creates the titular Mass Effect that enables FTL travel) and the children (that don’t die) ends up with Eezo nodes in their nervous system that allow them to manipulate mass effect fields for telekinetic purposes. Perhaps his mother was exposed to dilithium in a similar way in addition to the radiation.
His connection to the planet seems to be a light touch call back to Spock’s connection with the Genesis planet. Though I imagine in Spock’s case he was just locked into the Genesis matrix’s timing and thus he and the planet were aging in synch.
Agreed, Discovery’s FX and writing team still has issues with space is huge. Even at full impulse under cloak moving away from Osyraa would’ve placed Discovery outside of transporter range by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. General Chang could’ve told her, she needed Breathing room.And if she had moved away under cloak, then Su’kal’s microburn would’ve revealed their position and upped the tension of the moment.
Also a cloaking device would’ve been useful at Kwejian.
And why wasn’t Discovery upgraded with Quantum Torpedoes?
Come to think of it, a photon is a quantum (of light). Maybe both technologies have been subsumed under the former label.
#3CLB We watched the first two season on a laptop hooked up to a TV. Now we are using Roku. Cost about $40. It has been worth it.
I loved seeing Doug Jones’ real face, and I thought the idea of a child who’d been RAISED on a holodeck and who thus didn’t understand reality was really interesting.
But having the Burn be caused by a child’s tantrum? Seriously? This arc must have been written by a sleep-deprived parent whose child’s cries FEEL like they could destroy half the galaxy. :-)
The idea of holographic systems changing the characters’ appearance was interesting, and the explanation would have made sense – had they made everyone in the landing party look Kelpien. Or, since there were holographic representations of other species present, if one of the two humans had been left human in appearance. Making the one Kelpien look human and the two humans look like other species really didn’t make a lot of logical sense to me.
Though I’m sure Doug Jones’ pores appreciated the respite, as did his feet. There are a lot of stairs in Kingston Penitentiary, where some of this episode was filmed (there’s a photo of the staircase on the Kingston Whig-Standard’s website from earlier this week, so you can see what it looks like in normal lighting: https://www.thewhig.com/entertainment/made-in-kingston-star-trek-episode-airs-friday), So maybe the whole idea was just conceived as a way to let him wear regular boots for a few days. As someone who suffers from plantar fasciitis, I can’t imagine how his feet must feel after a day of filming in those boots without heels. Or, rather, I *can* imagine it, and am also imagining screaming in pain because of it.
Quoth Mr. D: “Said monster wasn’t a Kelpien mixed with a Ba’ul though, it was a Kelpien mixed with Kelp.”
Yeah, but to me, it looked a lot like the Ba’ul, and I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence that a boogeyman in their mythology bears a resemblance to their mortal enemies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So Adira going down to a dilithium planet with a Kelpien psychic siren and an elaborate magical holoenvironment complete with a castle… Is this how Gray comes back? Maybe not an actual body, but perhaps a holo visible to the crew.
Per “The Ready Room,” Janet Kidder wears a full facial prosthetic. This explains the very weird facial/mouth movements. I question this choice. It hides and impairs her natural expressions, making her face seem too deadpan, too frozen. Osyrra’s actions won’t be resolved till next episode when she attacks the Federation enclave. But really, she has everything she wanted: spore drive and a dilithium planet. Consolidate power before you go after the Feds. Then again, real world leaders have made similar strategic mistakes.
Doug Jones’s wig here made me think of Odo. Which hey, a Trill, a Bajoran, and a Changeling walk into a bar… his face also made me think of Din the Mandalorian every time he takes his helmet off, especially in the episode where he impersonated an Imperial remnant soldier. The vulnerability exposed in Din’s face, since he communicates thru voice and body language primarily, was echoed here with Saru’s vulnerability, while maintaining the mannerisms already established for Kelpiens.
Tilly has a hard first day in the chair. Lt. Nilsson is noticeably absent from the proceedings. As much as I like Tilly, a trial by fire isn’t a wise move.
Both ships cloak and stay in the exact same position in space? What’s the point of a cloak if you don’t evade?
In the same category as not wearing crash restraints on the bridge, why don’t they wear environment suits going down to a Demon planet? The Federation knows how to do this even in the 25th century (STO reference). Toxic atmosphere, temperatures in excess of 500 degrees, deadly radiation… you wear a suit.
The Burn… we don’t know the full story yet. It may be a feint and there’s more to it. As it stands now, no, it’s not convincing, not enough. It feeds into my pet theory that all of Trek (even Voyager) happens within one spiral arm. (Yes, I know stars move across arms.) The scale is really small, is what I’m saying. Even amplified by an entire dilithium planet (which the VFX actively combats by showing it to be basically rubble), what is the possible scale of this disaster? 50 light years? How far can a mental projection travel?
Somewhere back at Starfleet Academy there’s a bitter, beaten down galactic cartography professor feeling despair at the generations of cadets who failed their class and venture out thinking they are boldly crossing tens of thousands of light years. Tree fiddy members (and no massive stellar engineering in evidence) does not make the Federation a Kardashev Level Three galactic civilization. Perhaps Su’kal is an apt reflection of this: been around for awhile, but still an adolescent developmentally.
Bill Irwin becoming a regular is truly exciting. If that happens, that is… I’ve been a fan for a long time. I had a VHS tape (that I wore out) of one of his vaudevillian stage shows (crossed with elements of Waiting for Godot). Always made me laugh, no matter how many times I watched it.
Who would have guessed that the guy dancing with Robin Williams (RIP) in that corny video and song when I was growing up would become a respected actor and guest star as a Kelpien on Star Trek some 32 years later?
https://youtu.be/d-diB65scQU
@12/lance_sibley: “Or, since there were holographic representations of other species present, if one of the two humans had been left human in appearance. Making the one Kelpien look human and the two humans look like other species really didn’t make a lot of logical sense to me.”
It was a 125-year-old, radiation-damaged holodeck. It wasn’t supposed to make sense.
Besides, turning Saru human (which was presumably done for out-of-narrative reasons, like the location thing you suggested, or as a way to save time and money on prosthetics or give Jones a break in an episode where he was heavily featured) was a tall order for the audience to accept, so they had to set up the concept for us by changing the other two characters’ species as well.
@14/Sunspear: “Per “The Ready Room,” Janet Kidder wears a full facial prosthetic.”
That’s surprising. It seems pointless when all that’s needed is green paint.
“why don’t they wear environment suits going down to a Demon planet?”
They did. The suits they wore here were the same ones they wore to the seed vault in “Die Trying,” and it was established there that those suits have invisible force-fieldy breathing helmets built in.
“How far can a mental projection travel?”
It wasn’t purely mental, it was a subspace disruption. The idea is that Su’Kal somehow mutated in utero to develop a bond with the dilithium and the subspace radiation, so he’s able to trigger a subspace surge presumably amplified by the planet-sized mass of dilithium he lives on. It’s like the explosion of Praxis in The Undiscovered Country but far bigger.
Interesting that Osyra actress wears facial prosthetics and I’m assuming all of the Orion actors do which would explain their really smooth plastic-y CGI looking appearance. Interesting way to go instead of just standard green makeup.
I think a plot point everyone including myself had forgotten was that Osyra first took her ship to Kaminar to draw the Discovery there. Obviously that didn’t work but I have this fear that she caused utter devastation to the planet. What if Su’Kal and Saru are among the only few Kelpiens now left?
Everything on the planet was good. Lots of it really good. But man on the ship what a hash. I’m so sick of the tired trope about how apparently effortless it is to take over a starship. That got old back in TNG. And here again it took what, almost a full minute or two to capture the Discovery. Osyra still seems mediocre to me. She isn’t scary, she’s more an annoying person who keeps trying to talk to you. I guess Tilly failing makes sense at least since it was always unwise to make her FO.
I did have this fear that when Osyra was on the Discovery bridge and no one would tell her what they usually said when they did a spore drive jump that she was going to kill someone as an example for their defiance. While I’m glad no one got hurt it would surely have elevated the terror factor.
Osyra looks pretty Goth. Black leather and black lipstick.
@18 – I never understood why starships are so effortlessly stolen. Either computer security really sucks or it’s non-existent. How about some kind of biometric authentication to even move the ship?
Guess I should clarify: full body environment suits hardened against radiation, including gloves, so Culber doesn’t need to stare at his hand getting seared. But then the stakes wouldn’t be the same. It’s not just bringing your own air supply.
Sub-space technobabble still doesn’t explain the scaling involved. A psychic scream amplified by a planetary chunk of dilithium: in a magic mushroom universe, sure, why not. But is it the size of a supernova propagating? How many supernovas? The VFX (once again not quite up to the task) showed us a few dozen ship parked close together going boom and we’re told millions died. What’s the volume involved here? Did it even get outside the Orion Arm?
That’s at least one compliment I can give this season. The stakes are more believably scaled. The prior two season dabbled with stakes that only make sense for Karadashev civilizations Type 4 (Universe) or Type 5 (Multi-verse). That these tiny humans who aren’t even in command of their own galaxy should meddle and muck about in such matters must drive the Type 6s (Transcendent, like Q) crazy.
@22/Sunspear: Spaceships have to be hardened against radiation as a matter of course, yet Discovery couldn’t handle the conditions within the nebula for long. If the ship couldn’t handle the radiation within that environment, I doubt a suit could handle it.
“Sub-space technobabble still doesn’t explain the scaling involved. A psychic scream amplified by a planetary chunk of dilithium: in a magic mushroom universe, sure, why not. But is it the size of a supernova propagating? How many supernovas?”
It propagated through subspace. A single ship’s subspace transceiver can send a signal dozens or hundreds of light years, drawing on only a fraction of the power of the ship’s dilithium crystals. And the more powerful a subspace signal is, the farther and faster it propagates. This signal was amplified by a quantity of dilithium probably close to a trillion trillion times that in a starship’s warp core. And it only had to travel on the order of a thousand to ten thousand times farther than a normal subspace signal to span the whole galaxy.
Come to think of it, subspace propagation would explain why it only affected dilithium in active warp cores, as warp engines interact with subspace.
“What’s the volume involved here? Did it even get outside the Orion Arm?”
Obviously it did. If the Burn were strictly local, it would’ve been easy to recover over the past 120 years by trading for dilithium with neighboring powers — or else the weakened powers in the area would’ve long since been conquered by outside powers. The only way the scenario makes sense is if it’s galaxywide.
The reason for the Burn reminded me of Pohl’s “Beyond the Blue Event Horizon” which also had a lonely orphan’s psychological problems causing widespread crisis (but justified better (inadvertent misuse of a telepathic communication device)).
Re: the radiation in the Verubin Nebula and in the wreck of the Khi’eth, as a dramatic peril to the ship and away-trio …
In the 24cen, Starfleet had metaphasic shielding that could protect against the photosphere of a star for at least several minutes — is the unspecified-radiation of a dilithium-nursery nebula somehow more intense? In the 31cen, if the Khi’eth is expected to explore this region, it must’ve had adequate shields — and maybe they’re specialized, so in the 32cen, why not specially equip the Discovery before this mission? Our heroes felt some urgency when their prefix-code sensor-tap detected a life sign, but not reckless urgency.
Once on the surface, if a standard excursion-vest is insufficiently shielded, then carry a portable shield generator — just like TNG would often bring transporter pattern enhancers. If it’s unwieldy (bigger than a backpack), then dispatch some droids to tote the thing. Or wear hardsuits, which we haven’t seen since early in season 2? (VFX budget limits, I expect.)
(For that matter, a 32cen Starfleet away team should IMHO be surrounded by a cordon of p-matter security drones, given what earlier episodes showed of the Emerald Chain and UEDF, not to mention the droids scooting about Starfleet HQ and Reno’s sidekicks. Failure to adapt the show’s tropes to the changed technological milieu.)
@27/philip_thorne: “is the unspecified-radiation of a dilithium-nursery nebula somehow more intense?”
Maybe not, but the afterglow of a dilithium explosion powerful enough to blow huge chunks out of a planet and propagate a subspace shock wave across the entire galaxy? Yeah, I think that would be a hell of a lot more intense, even after 120 years.
As far as radiation protection goes, remember that the landing party had radiation protection, the medications they beamed down with and were expected to use if they were there long enough to need them. But the malfunctioning holodeck altered their gear and/or their perceptions of it so that they couldn’t access the radiation protection they went down with.
The idea that the galaxywide devastation of the Burn was caused by a single scared child with some kind of dilithium-and-subspace-radiation-induced prenatal mutation is a bit convoluted and hard to buy, and also a bit anticlimactic.
This. I was really hoping for this season to be better than season 1 and 2, but it is failing. No tactical sense whatsoever, no logic in its characters.
The only saving grace is the quality of the cast
@21 I’d expect the captain to be able to say one code word and instantly shut down every system.
@CLB: “The only way the scenario makes sense is if it’s galaxywide.”
It wasn’t. I would accept saying the Orion Arm was affected, maybe 3000-10000 LY at most. You are taking the writers’ claim and accepting it at face value. It hasn’t been earned. It’s why I’ve been focusing on the scaling issue and saying it’s basically a localized effect, far more limited than claimed. Toss this one into the previous seasons claiming claiming “ALL LIFE” or “THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE” is in danger. Even in universe they don’t seem to know the extent of the effect since communications are limited. They’re just assuming.
And really, the pic you linked shows the crew not wearing gloves. You accept going into a hard radiation environment bare handed? Sure, this is Trek and not hard SF, but this kind of stuff is just lazy. We may as well say the Burn happened because someone said “Hocus Pocus.” Or perhaps more aptly here, “Hobus Pobus.”
@30/Dracomilan: “This. I was really hoping for this season to be better than season 1 and 2, but it is failing.”
That is not a “This.” My statement that you quoted was a mild criticism within a mostly positive review. I absolutely do think this season is better than seasons 1 and 2, and I certainly do not agree that it is “failing.” I don’t appreciate having my words quoted out of context and misrepresented.
@30: I think Season 3 has definitely been superior to the first two seasons, but it has proceeded along an almost identical trajectory. Some promising opening episodes, some strong semi-stand-alones making good use of a talented cast and then a serialised storyline rising to the fore that hasn’t had much forethought put into it and increasingly becomes tangled up in logically-dubious plot choices, as if the writers were spitballing out rough ideas at gunpoint and having to stand by them even after they had turned out to be utterly nonsensical. This was easily the worst episode of the season to date.
It’s weird because Discovery has such a huge about of pre-production and writing time that they should be able to make the scripts and worldbuilding so strong and coherent, yet the show consistently feels like it’s been thrown together in less time than the old days when the TNG and DS9 writers really did have to scramble to make 26 episodes a year. Season 1 we’ll forgive them because Fuller leaving and the behind-the-scenes changes leaving them constantly off-balance, but Season 2 should have had a much stronger grounding in plot and ideas than “a time-travelling magic red spacesuit doing stuff.”
It’s frustrating because the show should and could be much better than it is (and it is far from unwatchable). But at the moment it’s having its arse comprehensively handed to it first by The Mandalorian and now The Expanse. The yawning chasm of quality between this week’s respective episodes of The Expanse and Discovery was quite impressive.
@34: The away team did equip themselves with the meds but if you recall when they beamed into the Kelpien ship, the holographic emitters changed their appearance including what they were wearing which meanstheir meds were gone.
@33. I didn’t want to imply that your words had a different meaning than the one stated. Your phrase was a good summary of my main criticism of this season in particular.
To the point: an heavy serialization is good until you have a good story to tell. Disco has interesting characters, but I’ve found the story arcs always lacking since season 1. Season 3 was a good opportunity to write a story of soaring spirits and exploration, and I do not feel I’m getting it.
;)
I gave Discovery some flack before for the excessive serialization and the way previous seasons were designed. Not so this time. This season is absolutely nailing a steady balance between serialized and still keeping the episodes coherent entries with beginning, middle and end.
And the Burn mystery is a far more compelling and watchable thread than the convoluted time travel plot and Burnham chasing the signals. While that plot had the mother/daughter aspect to generate tension in its favor, I still feel this plays better. I don’t know yet if the cause of the Burn being a Kelpian’s emotional outburst is necessarily a plausible one, we still have some questions left to fill the gaps. And it feels Trekkian that for once the problem isn’t caused by someone’s nefarious designs.
This episode feels like a natural progression of everything that came before this season, and a nice culmination of it all: Osyraa, the Burn. the Kelpians, Adira, Tilly in charge, it all flows naturally. Having put the Georgiou side of the story behind them, the episode rightfully kicks things into high gear by finally making Osyraa a real threat.
Not only was the final act a spectacular flow of action and tension, with the ship being taken over thanks to Tilly’s misguided call, but the episode also manages to strike gold in quieter moments of character. Saru’s lullaby was one of Discovery’s most intimate and tender moments across three seasons, and possibly Doug Jones’ finest moment in all of the show.
Also, kudos to the makeup artists. I had no idea that was Bill Irwin, and I just spent the last several years following his work on Legion.
@3/Christopher: I couldn’t even conceive of watching a show with this much visual depth on a phone screen. Even on a regular-sized flat screen TV, it feels lacking. I don’t quite feel they really convey the size and scope of the show, especially considering the move to the 2.39:1 aspect ratio last season. In an ideal world, each episode of Discovery would be shown in theatres. The big action episodes would play much better on a 30 foot screen.
It was a good twist on the “computer scenario trapped characters”, and it was nice to see Saru interacting with elements from his culture (and fun to see Doug Jones being Saru without the make-up). I don’t know if I very much buy the “mutant Kelpien tantrums cause the Burn” thing, so I hope there’s more than that to it. The CGI monster is pretty cool, though. Is the “mystery tune” Gray played on the cello and others hummed the Kelpien lullaby?
Good acting all around, and I liked Tilly in the big seat. Beyond that, not a very memorable episode.
@@.-@ – garreth: Actually, Saru is much older. :)
@5 – MikeKelm: Rewatch the episode, Saru still moves like a Kelpien.
@12 – Lance: Nice, I was wondering if that was a set, CGI, or what. Although they’ve shown in The Ready Room that Doug Jones wears normal boots in all scenes where Saru’s feet are not in frame.
While 350 members worlds seems paltry…because it is, the problem of The Burn mandates a galactic wide event. A Federation six centuries beyond the 24th could not be brought low by something that only affects a single arm of the Milky Way, especially since it wasn’t absolute. A single starship could solve the problem with a trading run through the Bajoran Wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant. A planet sized dilithium crystal with energy greater than a sun’s corona pumped into it constantly from a radioactive nebula? Yeah, I could see that causing a Galactic scale event, all it needs is a trigger. Heck a trip through the Galactic Barrier can turn a human into a psychic god, this is easy.
You wouldn’t have caught me going down there with no EV Suit though. The suit absorbing radiation before it gets to me could provide precious additional time to solve whatever problems are down there.
I don’t like the choice to add prosthetics to Orions either. Orion females are supposed to be beautiful to human eyes, adding something that detracts from her appearance is illogical. It seems like a change made for the sake of change. In the words of a wise Federation President, “History has taught us that just because you can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that you must do that thing.” I understand why she’s clothed of course, she’s in charge. I am surprised that there was no play to her pheromones. Having them work on Stamets would’ve been hilarious rather than the creepy mind control crown.
I get why Osyraa is the way she is though, she’s the calm type of villain. She doesn’t raise her voice because she doesn’t have to, which I like. She’s also the arrogant type since she doesn’t ever think she’s going to lose, which annoys me to no end. But ultimately she’s just another mob boss.
@17/Garreth
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. The Fleet Admiral sent a fleet to protect Kaminar. The twist is that that fleet at Kaminar will now be needed to defend Starfleet Headquarters and is now out of position.
@40/Eduardo & 41/MaGnUs: I’m with Mr. D on this one. Su’Kal did not cause the Burn. The irradiated dilithium planet caused the Burn. Su’Kal was just the trigger for its energy surge. He and the planet are somehow linked, so it reacts to his emotional state. I imagine it was his mother’s death that set it off.
@44/Mr. D: “I understand why she’s clothed of course, she’s in charge.”
Orion females have always been depicted with clothing, however scanty. It’s Ferengi females who traditionally went naked.
@45 – Chris: Yes, I understand it’s not literally Su’kal causing the Burn. I still don’t like it much.
@46/MaGnUs: It’s a stretch, yeah, but I like it better than “Oh, it’s some evil enemy out to destroy/conquer the galaxy.”
@45/ChristopherLBennett
Perhaps I should’ve specified well clothed and covered as opposed to inadvertently implying unclothed rather than mostly uncovered. Though considering all the Beta Canon material, I would’ve expected her to be dressed more like Bjayzl (snickers) whose named I can’t say without laughing even in text form. Expensive, luxurious, flamboyant. In any event it is a clear message that Osyraa gets by on her ruthless power and intellect rather than sexual manipulations which is always good.
I would like it even better if this series could go one season without some galaxy or universe spanning cataclysm and/or mystery box. Take that in account with the excessive melodrama, shallow storytelling, nostalgia bait, a cute cat, and it’s like watching Star Trek if it was made by the internet.
Servalen on Blake’s 7 managed to be expensive and luxurious AND intelligent and ruthless.
@44: The Federation only seemed to have 32 member worlds in TOS (The Way to Babel has 114 delegates, but that appears to be all the staff put together, with 32 actual ambassadors), rising to over 150 scattered over 8,000 (presumably cubic) light-years some 105 years later in the film First Contact, with a maximum linear distance from Earth of 2,000 light-years (indicated in the episode First Contact in TNG), although it has to be said that Star Trek is horribly inconsistent with distance and travel times across its entire length and breadth.
However, that’s “member worlds,” as in the member planets and civilisations, not the total number of worlds including colonies and outposts, which would be astronomically higher (and in fact must be, as more than 150 Federation member worlds, colonies, outposts and bases are mentioned). That’s also not including associated planets which are closely tied to the Federation without being formally part of it (i.e. Bajor), or interplanetary polities of their own which are allied to the Federation but not subservient to it, like the First Federation and the Klingon Empire.
The Federation increasing in size by only 200 additional member civilisations in another 700-800 years may appear to be somewhat implausible, but at a certain point the Federation would likely become far too vast to be easily manageable, especially if quantum slipstream drives and transwarp tunnels never became easily constructible.
@49: It appears that a lot of modern TV writers seem to have grown up with The X-Files and Lost and believe that “serialisation” means “unexplained mystery that we dangle in front of the audience like a carrot before a donkey before reaching an unsatisfying conclusion” (although I say that as someone who feels that Lost is a lot better in its resolution than some give it credit for).
Whereas the most successful example of a serialised story arc (at least in SFF; The Wire may be the gold standard for more mainstream drama) set up and executed remains Babylon 5, which as far as I can tell no modern TV writer has actually bothered watching. There you see how you set up mysteries and pay them off in a reasonable timeframe whilst still focusing your storyline on well-rounded, excellently-developed characters.
It’s worth noting that Kurtzman came up through the ranks as one of Abrams’ minions, and there is a certain similarity there in setting up mystery box stories and then kind of meandering to a bitty conclusion, but I’ve been continuously surprised that he’s not better at it, considering he was one of the co-creators of the splendid Fringe.
@51/Werthead: There were 32 ambassadors aboard the Enterprise, but we can’t assume that every single member world was represented on the Enterprise. It may not have been the only ship ferrying delegates to Babel, or the conference may not have required representatives from every world to attend, only those with a stake in the Coridan question.
8000 cubic light years would be a box only 20 light years on a side, or a sphere 12.4 ly in radius. That’s way, way too tiny to be the entire Federation. Heck, by Star Trek Star Charts definitions, that’s a single sector. A sphere 12.4 ly around Earth wouldn’t even contain Vulcan. There’s just no way to make sense of Picard’s “8000 light years” line.
@53: Damn, I got the cubic light-years of a single sector mixed up with the entire Federation. Yeah, that line I think just has to be rejected as a mistake. Considering it came after Voyager launched and was co-written by a Voyager writer, they should have remembered the rule-of-thumb instituted for Voyager of Starfleet ships taking 1 year to travel 1,000 light-years, so a Federation it took eight years to traverse was somewhat implausible (not to mention flatly contradicting episodes like Way of the Warrior, where it only took six weeks to get to the incredibly distant Cestus III, or Best of Both Worlds where it took 6-10 days to get from the vicinity of “one of the Federation’s outermost colonies” back to Earth).
Science Fiction Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
@49, that is one GORGEOUS cat!
@53/ChristopherLBennett
I always took Picard’s 8000 light years line to mean Federation territory is 8000 light years in breadth at its widest point. I’ve also always assumed that it was more a chain of bubbles.
LILY: How many planets are in this Federation?
PICARD: Over one hundred and fifty …spread across eight thousand light years.
Not 8000 light years of contiguous territory, but a series of linked star systems and territories arranged across a broad swath of space 8000 light years wide or long. Like an Archipelago in space. With the regular patrolled routes between them also counting as Federation territory. Take the Star Charts Beta Quadrant map. You have the near side Federation Space near the Azure nebula, then the area where Romulan and Klingon territory smash into each other, then on the other side of that is more Federation Space. Now in 3D space you’d probably be able to see a corridor between the two neutral zones, or an area of Federation space that passes under the Klingon/Romulan border like an underground river that leads to the Federation’s far Beta quadrant territories, out where the Veridian system is. It would be a waste of resources and political capital to claim and protect large reaches of mostly empty void rather than concentrating on inhabitable, resource rich, or strategically significant locations even in peacetime.
Eight years at Maximum Warp to cross the entire Federation end to end does seem like a lot, but it’s reasonable if you consider a Starfleet with 30,000 or so ships, with most member worlds having their own ships, and likely with representatives having residencies on or closer to Earth .
@50/PrincessRoxana
Exactly, though I wonder if Osyraa is pursuing another angle. On the one hand, being a boss in an era of scarcity, flaunting her wealth with lavish clothing is the ultimate flex. On the other hand if she wants to be seen as a woman of the people, a reasonable broker of goods and services, then the image of her not being gaudy and wasteful may also be useful.
@56/Mr. D: “I always took Picard’s 8000 light years line to mean Federation territory is 8000 light years in breadth at its widest point.”
By Star Charts standards, that’s impossible. It shows the Federation as less than eight hundred light-years wide. The circular inset in the second gatefold map showing all of local space is only 1500 ly in diameter.
Although its “Approximate Limit of Explored Space” on the galaxy map at the front is roughly 8000 ly, so Picard could have meant that the Federation has explored that far, though it’s a huge stretch to interpret “spread across” to mean that.
@57: I’ve seen some good fanon attempts to resolve the two by having a “greater Federation” of diffuse space extending across vaster distances surrounding the various powers (i.e. off the map in Star Charts and the newer Stellar Cartography, which were used as references for the on-screen maps in Discovery). That does make sense: the Federation is made of individual member planets who want to join, and there’s no reason those planets need to be in contiguous territory. If the Karemma decided to leave the Dominion and join the Federation, would the Federation say no just because they can only be reached via the Bajoran wormhole and in real space their territory is 70,000 light-years distant?
A possible canon indication of this is Deneb IV in TNG‘s Encounter at Farpoint. Deneb is a real star, 2,600 light-years from Earth. Assuming the name hasn’t been transferred somewhere else, the Enterprise-D has clearly travelled that far, and travels back from Deneb to Earth (in time for Conspiracy) and then to the Romulan Neutral Zone (in time for The Neutral Zone). They later travel from Earth (in Family) to Malcor III, 2,000 light-years away (in First Contact), in ~6 months. That supports the idea of a somewhat bigger Federation at least leaning towards Picard’s statement in the film (or at least not massively out of keeping with it; maybe 4,000 light-years across rather than 8,000).
The need to “shrink” the Federation came about only when DS9‘s Emissary and then Voyager instituted this “1 year = 1,000 light-years” rule, which seems to have been done solely to make the galaxy seem larger again. TNG seemed to indicate Federation ships were much faster beforehand: J25 in Q Who? is 7,000 light-years distant, taking two years and seven months to reach Federation space (which would reduce Voyager‘s flight-time from 70+ to 26 years), whilst Where No One Has Gone Before suggests that the Enterprise-D could travel 2.7 million light-years in 300, which would reduce Voyager‘s flight-time at that speed to under 8 years (WNOHGB is generally insane though, and perhaps best ignored).
That said, even post that rule being instituted, DS9 played fast and loose with it anyway, with round trips to Ferenginar, Qo’noS, Earth and Romulus being done in days to maybe a week or two (at most) when, even with a smaller scale, they should have taken quite a few weeks or months (DS9 also has the Dominion sneaking through Romulan territory to attack Federation and Klingon space which is…problematic given the maps of the time and since).
Even Voyager, which gave at least the illusion of keeping track of Voyager‘s position (with their scientific advisor even noting they’d fudged things to keep Voyager in the Delta Quadrant even after they should have passed the border into the Beta sometime in Season 6 or 7), screwed things up on occasion. My favourite plot hole in all of Star Trek is the Pathfinder team locating Voyager by extrapolating their course from their previous contact in Message in a Bottle…but that would be completely impossible because Voyager was thrown 25,000 light-years closer to Earth by the events of Dark Frontier (which occurred in the interim). They’d have no idea where to aim the communications wormhole.
@58/Werthead: I’m aware of everything you say, and the inconsistency of it all is exactly why I don’t think it’s worth the effort to try to rationalize any specific number stated in any given movie or show. Numbers in Trek are all over the place, and I just think of them as placeholders. If the number doesn’t logically fit, I just ignore it.