The primarily feeling I get watching the fourth-season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery—which is entitled “Kobayashi Maru” after the training exercise seen at the top of The Wrath of Khan and which has become synonymous with “no-win scenario” even outside of Trek—is that this is what the show should’ve been in the first place. I’m far more invested in the thirty-second century than I ever was in back-filling the twenty-third.
The secondary feeling I got from this episode in particular is that this is what Star Trek is about: our heroes helping people.
We open with Burnham and Book on an away team mission, talking to butterfly-like aliens who had a very strained relationship with the Federation. It’s actually a pretty hilarious opening, as the aliens are already wary of the Federation’s generous offer of dilithium, and then they find out about Grudge. First they’re pissed that they brought a carnivore to their world; then they’re pissed because they think the Federation will make pets of them the way Book made a pet of Grudge; then when Book and Burnham both refer to her as a queen, as they often do, the aliens interpret this as holding a monarch hostage. All this results in an attack.
Buy the Book
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But Burnham doesn’t fire back, and instead works with Discovery to help them: they have satellites that regulate the planet’s magnetic field, but they’re malfunctioning. Tilly, Stamets, and Adira figure out a way to fix them. The good news is that the planet is fixed. The bad news is that now the butterfly people can shoot straight. However, Burnham leaves the dilithum behind and returns to Discovery. The emperor is surprised that they still left the dilithium even though they were assaulted.
I enjoyed the hell out of this opening scenario on several different levels. For starters, it looks amazing. State-of-the-art CGI has enabled Secret Hideout to give Star Trek some truly magnificent alien landscapes. After five decades of using Vasquez Rocks and the “planet hell” soundstage for alien worlds, it’s so wonderful to see lush, beautiful landscapes that are the finest other worlds we’ve seen on TV since Farscape (the previous gold standard for creating new planets that look like somewhere that isn’t Earth).
In addition, it’s funny as hell, but it’s not played for laughs. This opening works as an introductory prelude much like the Nibiru sequence at the beginning of Star Trek Into Darkness and the first contact at the top of Star Trek Beyond, but both of those were pure comic relief with a big silly escape. But while this similar scene has many of the same comic beats, it also includes our heroes helping out the locals and ending it with a good talk between Burnham and the emperor in which it was made clear that there would be better relations.
There’s a reason why so many Trek episodes start with answering a distress call. Helping people is what Trek is all about. This is emphasized again for the latter portion of the episode, when Discovery is sent to Deep Space Repair Beta 6, which has had a catastrophic failure. With the spore drive, Discovery can get there faster than anyone, so they go along.
And they have a passenger: newly elected Federation President Lara Rillak. According to Paramount’s publicity, Rillak is part Bajoran, part Cardassian, and part human, which is rather nifty, and she’s also the first Federation President we’ve seen onscreen who wasn’t a dude. We’ve seen presidents in The Voyage Home (a human male played by Robert Ellenstein), The Undiscovered Country (an Efrosian male played by Kurtwood Smith), and the DS9 two-parter “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost” (a Grazerite male played by Herchel Sparber). And now we have Rillak, played with straightforward dignity by Chelah Horsdal.
I am particularly fascinated by Rillak, mainly because I literally wrote the book on the Federation presidency (my 2005 Trek novel Articles of the Federation). She’s a bit too much of a politician in spots—like twice questioning Burnham’s command decisions in the middle of a rescue mission on the bridge, which is not something you should do, and Burnham can’t really put her off the bridge because, y’know, she’s the president—and she has an interesting background, as someone who worked for a cargo carrier when she was younger.
And toward the end of the episode, she has a very interesting conversation with Burnham about, basically, plot armor. During the rescue of the repair base, Burnham takes several risks to Discovery. The gravitational anomaly that damaged the base also moved the system’s Oort cloud further in so that the station and ship are being pelted by chunks of ice. Discovery has to extend her shields around the station, which weakens them, and give them a time limit to be able to get the crew off the station. They manage it, just barely, but Rillak is not thrilled that Burnham took the risk she did.
It’s an interesting conversation the two of them have, with Burnham on the side of no-person-left-behind that most TV show characters follow, and Rillak with the much more practical and realistic notion that you can’t possibly save everyone. It almost feels like a TV Tropes discussion: Burnham will take the crazy-ass risks because she still remembers being “abandoned” by her parents when the Klingons attacked, and she always makes it because she’s the star of a television show. Rillak quite rightly points out that that kind of luck doesn’t always hold out.
How interesting that conversation really is will depend a lot on how the rest of this season plays out. Will Burnham’s dogged insistence on insane risks bite her on the ass, or will she continue to have plot armor and always win?
Speaking of the rest of the season, while this episode quite nicely has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it also sets up stuff that we’ll be seeing more of this season, to wit, the gravitational anomaly that destroys Beta 6—which also destroys Book’s homeworld of Kwejian, a fate that Book himself barely escapes. His family does not—his brother Kyheem and Kyheem’s son Leto are killed right after the latter goes through a coming-of-age ritual with Book and Kyheem.
In addition, we look in on Saru, who has returned to Kaminar to find that the Kelpiens and the Ba’ul are living together in peaceful harmony. They have also been completely isolationist since the Burn, and Saru gives an impassioned speech to convince them that they should rejoin the galactic community.
This is a good season opener, but not without some irritating flaws. After setting up some very fascinating tension between Stamets and Burnham at the end of last season, there’s no actual sign of it in this episode. Yes, it’s many months later, but at least some acknowledgment of it would be nice. And the deaths of Kyheem and Leto as well as that of the Beta 6 station commander are manipulative as hell, and I didn’t really appreciate it—though the former two at least are likely to have a significant impact on Book going forward.
Speaking of those two, while the return of Luca Doulgeris as Leto and Ache Hernandez as Kyheem is irritatingly short-lived, we’ve got some other folks back from last season whom we should be seeing more of past this week: Oded Fehr is back as Admiral Vance (who’s very sweetly reunited with his family). Blu del Barrio is now in the opening credits as Adira, and we’ve also got Ian Alexander as the image of Gray. Bill Irwin’s Su’Kal is doing very well on Kaminar, and the entire bridge crew is back as well. I’m especially loving the double act of Owosekun and Detmer at the front of the bridge, and I really hope those two continue to develop; the banter between Oyin Oladejo and Emily Coutts is letter-perfect.
Even with the flaws, this is a good opening. Let’s hope it continues…
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the author guests at Philcon 2021 this weekend at the Crowne Plaza in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He will be doing programming, including panels, a reading, and an autographing. See his full schedule here.
This week is a semi-historic one for Star Trek. For the first time since the last week in May of 1999, we have two different episodes of two different Trek productions debuting the same week. Then it was DS9‘s “The Dogs of War” and Voyager‘s “Equinox, Part I.” Today, it’s this episode of Discovery and Prodigy’s “Terror Firma.”
First time this millennium that has happened. Not bad for a franchise that many thought was dead and buried after Enterprise was cancelled in 2005…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Whilst I am really looking forward to this episode after season three was moving in all the right directions, my hope has been soured by it being removed from my location before it started.
I will get to see it but not the way I would have intended. C’est la vie!
My main issue with this episode is that even though all of the parts worked well in isolation, they didn’t quite gel for me as a cohesive episode. Indeed, we got two frameworks which could have anchored entire episodes by themselves (the brilliant opener, and the “main plot” at the Deep Space station), with a bunch of shaggy and mostly narratively unneeded bits interspersed.
The scenes onboard Starfleet HQ (or wherever it was) were for the most part not really required – some other way of introducing the Federation President to Michael would have been more economical. The scenes with Book and his family (don’t appreciate fridging an entire planet for character growth) could have been set aside until next week. Ditto the stuff with Saru and Su’Kal, which in one case just ground the high-octane action to a screeching halt.
I did appreciate that the common theme of Michael surviving just by not giving up and rolling sixes was carried through both plots – and that (similar to last season) Michelle Paradise is making the implicit characterization of Burnham initially into a critical examination of her flaws. However, I can’t help but feel there would have been a more adroit way of getting there with more of a slow burn.
More than any other trek before it (though Picard is similar) Discovery follows the monomyth structure. This week appears to be launching the cycle again. I’m not entirely opposed but I was hoping for a little divergence this season. We’ve developed a number of characters very well and I’m hoping they get a chance to shine.
Otherwise I loved the opening sequence and for that matter the rescue sequence. I understand why we had to do the Kobyashi Maru with three dead, four wounded (it starts our heroes descent) but I wasn’t completely in love with the entire destruction of a planet (nice nod to Star Trek VI where we can verify the location but not the existence of a location). Also a beautiful job with the creation of a world as well as the upside down control room
I loved the use of “Archer’s Theme” when they introduced the new shipbuilding facility named after him.
@Xander: yeah, Paramount shot themselves in the foot by removing all Trek shows from Netflix with only 2 days notice. Only legally watchable in US and Canada till Paramount+ launches in 40-some countries next year, which is a quarter of what Netflix reached. Streaming wars are intense, but this makes no short term sense. Then they complain about piracy…
@2 & @6 yep I’m in the same boat. I mean I could easily pirate it. It’s trivial to do. Or I could just shrug and say “well if you don’t want viewers then fair enough”. Certainly won’t be buying Yet Another Download Service just for it.
Beyond baffling as a decision.
With the caveat that I really don’t want the comments section on this episode to entirely be about the show’s sudden international distribution issues, I will say that in the abstract, I understand the reasoning. Having your own streaming service is where the money is right now, and I don’t blame Paramount for going after it and putting their stuff there — while their catalogue of material isn’t as strong as Disney’s, it’s still pretty huge, and makes it a worthwhile purchase for many, especially with Trek as its tentpole.
But man, did they botch the execution of it, doing this in such a way that everyone was caught off-guard (including the actors) and people are pissed off. That’s not a great way to encourage people to pay for your streaming service…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hmm, maybe I’m just a big ‘ol grump but this episode didn’t really do it for me. It certainly was okay. But I think my issue is mainly with the series in general as I’ve come to the realization that it’s the style of this show that actively turns me off. It’s very frenetic and manic and breathless, and all that jazz. It’s very much in the aesthetic of the Star Trek reboot films which I’m not overall a fan of. So while the material of the episode was generally fine, it’s the overly slick presentation that just makes my eyes glaze over.
Regarding the intro, I didn’t find it particularly funny although I was aware the material was going for a humorous tone. Perhaps I’m too analytical because as the negotiations were falling apart I was more feeling distress for the escalation in danger that Michael and Book were facing and how they could have chosen their words better, then taken enjoyment at the comic hijinks in the miscommunication.
And the whole personal conflict between Burnham and the Federation president felt forced to me. It just seemed to me like the president should know better and not interject herself into the methods that a Starfleet captain employs. Maybe an analogy would be like the U.S. President getting involved with and complaining to a Navy Seal team leader how he executed a rescue operation. It just wouldn’t happen. So I found all of that annoying.
Nice to see Grudge again though. And the callout to Enterprise/Archer was nice and I’m not even a fan of the Archer theme. I personally would have found it funny if a snippet of “Faith of the Heart” was used instead, and not even with singing but just the score.
I had mixed feelings about the rescue from the repair base. I think the show did a good job of explaining how the station crew couldn’t evacuate themselves. However, the show fell into the trap that so many of its predecessors have fallen into — despite the fact that Discovery’s own transporters were out, the ship should have transporter-equipped shuttlecraft able to expedite the rescue (maybe like the one used by Burnham and Book at the start of the episode).
There was an earlier issue with Discovery having to meet the station’s speed and rotation to effectively get transporter coordinates for the station’s control center, but that issue appeared to have been solved when the Oort cloud pummeling began. Also, Discovery, the station and any possible shuttlecraft were within Discovery’s shield envelope — transporting with the shuttle shouldn’t have been a problem.
However, Discovery sent out Burnham in a freakin’ workbee (in shortsleeves!) to clear what was jamming the escape craft at the station. It was somewhat cool to see, but shouldn’t really have been necessary by an adequately equipped 32nd-century Federation starship.
Not using the shuttlecraft could’ve been handwaved away (just like how ALL of Discovery’s transporters were unavailable because of an issue with the Heisenberg compensators). However, the failure to address the matter is just another oversight that makes it hard to fully get on board with this show (despite the cavernous turbolift shafts).
The publicity machine in the UK also got screwed over. Magazines went to print saying Star Trek Discovery was back on Friday on to see it pulled days before. Podcasts who were trying to review the show got told “it isn’t available and we don’t know when it will be” by Netflix the week the show was meant to realise. Why would these people promote Picard Season 2 if the same thing will happen again?
Yup, Star Trek Discovery, the show in search of a premise!
Same here not being a fan of the frenetic style. I keep waiting for it to change, but now I realize my old ideas about the way Trek should be are just that–old. Oh well.
Also, monarch... I see what you did there.
I am not really a fan of Michael being a captain because I felt that they were doing a good job of establishing that she wasn’t someone who needed to be captain to be the protagonist of the show. It was a refreshing change and seasons 1-3 all pretty much showed her to be pathologically insubordinate, disobedient, and going off on her own.
Now she shows immense disrespect and dislike for the President of the Federation for seemingly no other reason than the fact she was a civilian. That’s something I dislike in military science fiction.
This show’s cast is so diverse that there are no cishet white male human characters. I don’t know how to feel about that.
But I love how the technology has progressed, and the call outs to Archer and Voyager.
What’s the big deal about not having a regular cishet white male character for once? It’s basically been the norm since TOS so it’s nice to change things up in that regard. Even the first three seasons of DSC had such characters so it’s not like they’ve gone unrepresented on this series.
I think it’s pretty cool that the main bridge crew is majority female for like the first time ever on a Star Trek series.
Sadly, a good number of Star Trek fans somehow equate diversity with being “woke” and “politically correct” when it’s just the series finally recognizing the diversity that actually exists in our world. I have my complaints about Discovery but its wonderful diversity is not one of them.
@10/QuesoGuapo – I concur that the entire “save the station” subplot suffered from “forgot we have this alternative capability.” In increasingly speculative order, I object to these oversights:
* To extend the ship’s shields to cover the entire station, there’s a time limit. But only a small part of the station is inhabited — so shrink the shield bubble.
* The lifeboat doesn’t fit everybody. Use phasers to sever that section of the station and use *it* as a lifeboat.
* The lifeboat is rushing for Discovery so they can spore-jump to safety, but it crashes into the docking bay. Where’s the tractor beam for terminal guidance?
* Discovery’s transporter is disabled. Does this mean the personal-teleporters rely on the shipboard system? But from the start of season 3, they’ve been depicted as standalone devices. If they are, why not dispatch a DOT to deliver spares for the station crew? Or, what’s the mass limit of a personal teleporter? Can it perform “ride-along apparition,” in Harry Potter-lingo?
* The station crew can’t move to an adjacent section, because it’s in vacuum. Why don’t they have emergency spacesuits onboard? (Adira and Tilly could’ve toted alternative emergency gear, but at the time there was no imminent threat, so their only objective was “fix the gravity and orientation.”)
* How do you get crushed in a lifeboat? Shouldn’t it be equipped with future-airbags?
An odd gap in the VFX: after the crash of the lifeboat, Culber moves the wreckage aside — why aren’t the DOTs helping? (Hypothesis: the robots can easily be inserted into the background — “make it look busy” — but they can’t easily be integrated with actors and props. IMHO, if that’s a problem for the show’s VFX, the DOTs should’ve been established as EVA-only devices, so that they’re not *called upon* in any situation to interact with human actors.
I really enjoyed this episode and feel that Discovery is really hitting its stride in the 32nd century. The stories are more interesting and being freed from the burden of needing to exist within existing canon is serving them well.
It definitely feels more Trek, and I am quite fond of the characters. I hope we spend more time with some of the secondary characters this season as well as developing the opening credits characters.
My complaints are mostly with the camera style and the occasional style-over-substance problem — I feel like the camera is constantly moving and spinning. There were multiple times when the camera spun just because… maybe they were bored keeping it steady? But it just made me feel slightly queasy to be spinning so much.
Also, there were a LOT of wardrobe changes. It’s fine to change the uniforms to fit with the rest of Starfleet in this era, but a couple of times I went back a few seconds to figure out if I missed something because the characters were suddenly in different outfits (Burnham on the first away mission, then Tilly and Adira leaving the bridge and showing up on the station in totally different uniforms, etc.).
On second viewing I too also noted the camera was always in motion and then there was at least one moment of a very dramatic spinning around the bridge. I find these movements annoying and over the top for sure.
There was also what I thought was a jarring edit: there’s the close-up on Burnham as she’s flying through space back to Discovery during the scene where she tries to catch the Federation president in a lie. Then it immediately cuts to Burnham now in her regular uniform strolling onto the bridge. A transition scene of Burnham landing on the ship or dialogue from someone that Burnham is now safely aboard would have made the scene of Burnham back on the bridge less abrupt.
@17, re: uniforms — I concur. At the Academy induction ceremony, Burnham’s dress uniform is a different color and style (*) than that of her crew, watching from the gallery; Adm. Vance wears yet another style. Upon teleporting from the Discovery bridge to the repair station, Tilly and Adira are suddenly wearing the show’s angular excursion vests. Starfleet uses p-matter in at least some of its garb — Burnham suddenly sprouts a pressure suit when her workbee is breached — but can it deploy mid-teleport? Not to mention the change in duty uniforms from grey to color (in-universe, several months).
(*) For one thing, Burnham’s burgundy dress uniform tunic has an even hem, unlike the asymmetrical hem of the duty uniform, which reminds me of a mis-buttoned shirt.
Are the producers giving the costume designer(s) too much leeway? The show has switched from Gersha Phillips to Bernadette Croft. Are they unable to reach consensus on a look, so they’re saying “put it all onscreen”? Do they want to give cosplayers choices?
@17, @18, camera movement — It was returning director Olantunde Osunsanmi (IMDb entry), with his 10th ep of DSC. At least this time he didn’t actually roll and invert the camera <grumble in dislike>.
#14 JasonD
You should feel good about it.
Also, Oded Fehr as Vance has a family; David Cronenberg. Not sure about Doug Jones’ sexuality.
@20: I believe @14 is referring to the regular characters as opposed to any reoccurring characters. And I think he’s also referring specifically to human characters, not the actual humans that portray any of these characters.
Sorry I’m a bit late — due to my Internet outage last week, I wasn’t able to rewatch season 3 until this week (something I felt I needed to do since I had to watch the last 5 episodes on my phone last year). I’ve been binge-watching for much of the day, and I’m all caught up now.
A pretty good start, though I do find the action over the top. The opening sequence didn’t do much for me, with the forced humor and the clumsy negotiation strategy and the utter ridiculousness of the aliens with wings made up of individual butterflies (I really don’t think that would be aerodynamically feasible). I liked the station rescue far better, since the physics and logistics actually made sense — having to match speed and rotation for transport, using thrusters to stabilize it. I don’t see why they couldn’t have just used a tractor beam to stabilize it, but this was cool. And the character of the station chief was effectively written, with some nice texture.
And I wish DSC didn’t feel it needed an overarching threat every season. What do you want to be the destructive gravitational phenomenon will turn out to have something to do with that experimental “pathway” propulsion system the president mentioned installing on Voyager-J?
I didn’t notice the constant camera moves others have complained about, but I was distracted and annoyed wondering why the bridge and corridors had flame pots installed in the walls to send out gratuitous fireballs in the middle of the action scenes. It was ridiculous. They didn’t represent any specific damage or breach, there are literally just decorative puffs of flame erupting out of the walls.
@22 I’ll forgive them for the flame throwers if they’re just reacting to criticism about their exploding consoles but otherwise it was very distracting.
I’be played enough Kerbal Space Program to know that matching trajectories and rotation like that is awful. So it was a fun bit of flying.
@13 perhaps I’m too fond of Miles Vorkosigan but I can’t help but think that if you have a genius who won’t follow orders and improvises like mad put her in a position where she takes as few orders as possible. Though almost all of Miles’ COs do end up in prison or otherwise detained, so maybe he’s not the best example
@22/CLB: I think the action on Discovery is going to be over the top in general, big pyrotechnics and all. I was just thinking today and Kurtzman’s overall design to have each of his Star Trek series to appeal to a different demographic…
Discovery is definitely for the action-oriented crowd and thus has ‘splosions in nearly every episode and always has a season-long doomsday-oriented arc.
Picard is slower and more cerebral but still gritty and dark.
Prodigy is lighter and more family-oriented and meant to be appealing to children.
Lower Decks is I guess supposed to be irreverent fun and full of canon references, but appeals to those into sophomoric humor.
Strange New Worlds I can only guess (and hope) will get back to more of TNG-era episodic adventures but still having longer character arcs.
One small thing that stood out to me, particularly in light of how the ship needing one at all times played a role in last season’s plot, was that Burnham does jot seem to have an XO… unless the intent is that Rhys is her XO, but that didn’t seem to be the case to me.
One thing I don’t buy is that Gray still doesn’t have a body. I mean, a 125-year-old holodeck was able to create a body for him effortlessly, and it was never said that there was anything special or unique about its technology. So any Federation holodeck or mobile emitter should be able to create a holo-body for Gray just as easily. Or they could use programmable matter to create a lifelike synth body for him.
@24/garreth: I’d say Prodigy is pretty dark. It opens with the characters escaping from slavery, after all, and Gwyn’s relationship with her father takes a plenty dark turn in episode 5. Yes, there’s lots of fun character banter and wisecracking, but the situations faced by the main characters are among the darkest we’ve ever seen in Trek. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that dark situations require a dark tone.
And it’s an even bigger mistake to assume that children’s shows don’t have dark situations. On the contrary, they often go extremely dark — e.g. Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the world was suffering under a hundred-year war and the main character had to cope with the loss of everyone he’d ever known and wrestle with the ethics of whether he’d be forced to kill in order to save the world. For children, the world is a scary place, full of things they don’t understand and have no control over. So lots of children’s fiction taps into those fears.
The whole thing just feels like Burnham’s fantasy or extended dream sequence. Maybe the last episode will end with her waking up on the prison transport from episode one. And making Adira completely insufferable and Stamets a bumbling old man is not a wise move.
@27 When did they make Adira completely insufferable? Or Stamets a bumbling old man?
Tilly is still my favorite character and every time she’s not on screen, I’m like, “Where’s Tilly?”
A pretty competent season opener overall. It’s definitely for the best in keeping Discovery in the 32nd century, with plenty of new ground to cover. I really liked the new Federation President, for one.
Rillak is a very necessary character – one who’s willing to stand up to Michael and challenge her in ways the Discovery crew simply won’t.
That’s always been my one issue with the show over the past three seasons. Michael was defined as someone who broke the rules in The Vulcan Hello, and who had to pay the price. Right from the start, she was an outcast – a character who’s seen as the reason people lost lives during the Klingon war. Other than Sylvia Tilly, people did not trust her at all.
Which is why it always bothered me that once she overcame that initial arc, she was not only given plot armor, but she was treated as perfect saint by the crew. That reached nauseating levels during season 2. Season 3 thankfully started to crack that facade a bit, not only with Saru having to deal with her insubordination, but also the episode that broke Stamets’ trust in her*.
*I did notice of the lack of Michael/Stamets tension this week, and I do hope it doesn’t get swept under the rug.
Rillak being there and the reintroduction of the Kobayashi Maru situation gives the writers the chance to pull Michael out of her comfort zone and actually put a dent in her. Rillak could also become an effective replacement for Georgiou – a reminder that Michael’s reckless actions have consequences, and that sometimes people die. Michael always had issues with losing people. I hope the rest of the season goes through with this and gives her the kind of defeat we really haven’t seen since the pilot episode (the equivalent to Kirk’s shameful loss in Wrath of Khan).
I adored listening to Archer’s theme once again as they unveiled the new space dock. I appreciate the effort of the current writers to keep the franchise’s history alive and relevant.
And now, a rant: I subscribe to both Paramount+ and Netflix. Paramount/CBS has to be extremely stupid and shortsighted to just pull Discovery out of Netflix like that. Not only that, but postponing Discovery on Latin America with no established air date is just a kick in the balls. We already have Paramount + for heaven’s sake! We’re in 2021. Movies open simultaneously worldwide. Netflix released the past 42 episodes of Discovery here in less than three days after the original US airdate for each one. There’s no excuse for Paramount’s newly found case of distribution delay. We get Mandalorian on Disney + at the same time as US viewers.
I’m not going to risk spoilers as I wait months for a show that’s already aired. I’m already postponing Prodigy because of that. And I hate them for doing this. It’s pretty much an invitation to pirate something I was honestly willing to pay for. Talk about poorly handled international distribution rights.
Sorry about that. Rant over.
I enjoyed this episode, and I think Discovery’s best stories may be ahead.
But of course I have complaints:
— Destroying a planet to give Booker some angst, and to keep him on the ship
— After 900 years you’d think they’d have solved the problem of stuff exploding when the ship is hit by energy
— There is going to be another galaxy-destroying threat, so Michael can save the entire galaxy again
I figure the season’s theme will be “leading from personal need” instead of leading from logic. I predict Michael will be shown that she can’t always take the big risk to save everyone, but in the end she will do so and save the galaxy. It’s a version of Kirk vs. Spock. For someone who was supposedly raised with Vulcan logic, Michael has really embraced the Kirk way of letting emotions rule.
Phillip @16, the lifeboat did not crash into the shuttle bay. It arrived safely, followed a second later by one of the giant chunks of methane crashing into the shuttle bay.
@@@@@ 31 – It’s the Nero Syndrome all over again. If you want someone to really feel the hurt, you have to destroy their entire planet and everyone the know that lives there.
One tiny step below that is Spock’09 since he got to keep his daddy.
If course, it goes all the way back to TOS and The Changeling but we never saw the inhabitants and knew nothing about them.
Everything has to be BIGGER!!!!
-26-
I don’t think that makes Prodigy a dark series, though. Dark situations usually don’t leave an overall impression of darkness if the tone is light and the pace moves along at a good clip.
I mean, if I described a movie that has situations involving terrorists, bullying, incestuous feelings, sexual assault, and existential crises, that seems pretty dark on the face of it, doesn’t it? Well, that movie would be a little, dark, navel-gazing, European arthouse film called… Back to the Future. ;-)
@34/Shaky: “I don’t think that makes Prodigy a dark series, though. Dark situations usually don’t leave an overall impression of darkness if the tone is light and the pace moves along at a good clip.”
That is exactly my point — that it’s simplistic to try to reduce an entire show to a single adjective. “Dark” is just one shade in the mix, and dark subjects do not require a dark tone.
I don’t think Prodigy has any less darkness in it than Discovery or Picard. All three shows have a mix of lighter and darker elements, and despite the lazy tendency to caricature DSC and PIC as purely “dark” shows, they’ve both tended to end their season arcs on very optimistic and upbeat notes, sometimes more so than is plausible given the situations. Indeed, DSC season 3 was optimistic throughout. Though it postulated a dark event 120 years in the past, its stories were mostly about the process of recovering from that darkness and making things better, one planet at a time.
I enjoyed the season opener. The part of the episode that bugged me wasn’t story related, but Burnham leaves the bridge to go rescue the crew, but takes time to change clothes first. Then, after rushing back to the ship, still in an emergency, takes the time to change clothes again. It’s a minor thing, and other Trek shows have been guilty of it as well, but it bugged me.
Bobby
@36/Bobby Nash: Maybe the clothes are programmable matter and alter themselves as needed.
@37. Maybe. I would probably buy that, but they need to not leave it up to us to assume that.
Bobby
Re: Burnhams clothes
It occurs to me that many times we’ve pointed out the ridiculousness of Starfleet officers going into battle in just their every day uniforms without the benefit of personal shields or for that matter armor. I can’t completely blame Burnham for changing gear to suit her task, which realistically took her a minute? Changing back when she came on board though seems a little dumb thoug
I think Discovery is getting better every season. I do wish it was more of an ensemble show and that Saru was still Captain. Saru is just a brilliant character played by a brilliant actor. Nothing against SMG. I like her fine. But Saru is special.
Count me as someone who also dreads seeing Directed by Olantunde Osunsanmi. Just insane camera movements. Please stop and let me look at these beautiful sets.
Same goes for ships. Everything is so dark. I like ships. Let me see the ships!
The dark sets of current SciFi and fantasy shows and movies make me crazy! And resolving cameras make me motion sick, and don’t even mention lense flare!
@40. matt: agreed about the ships being underlit and underdetailed. They pay a lot of money for design and VFX for it to be wasted in dark and murky shots. Also agree that the camera moves sometimes just to make it seem like more is going on than is actually going on, trying to artificially goose the excitement. It’s a bad stylistic choice.
The credits list the 4 or 5 bridge crew we’re familiar with as Lt. Commanders. Burnham doesn’t appear to have an XO (which feeds into the argument some viewers hold about her outsize ego, that she believes she can do it all). I wonder if Saru will be slotted into the Commander/Number One position when he returns and how he’ll feel about it.
Is Tilly no longer the first officer? It looked like Rhys was acting as second in command in this episode.
I definitely second the complaints about the direction, even if I didn’t find it too distracting in this particular episode. Discovery in general doesn’t really allow its audience to have the same sense of the ship as being an actual, physical place that previous series have, and I think that the over-reliance on trick shots is a major part of this. The mood lighting also bugs me. It seems like you’d have crew going stark, raving mad if they had to serve on a ship for months or years at a time with no natural-looking lighting.
Anyways, this was a strong season premiere right up until the end, but it seems such a waste to destroy a potentially interesting planetary civilization just to create pathos. We’ll see how the story develops.
@43/Iacomina: Tilly was Captain Saru’s acting first officer until a permanent one could be found, since she was just an ensign so it was irregular. And Saru isn’t captain anymore anyway.
Finally got around to watching this last night, and a few thoughts.
I did like the scientific aspects they highlighted, nice return to form. Though on the rescue, I can’t be the only person wondering why they didn’t use their advanced energy weapons to deal with what is primarily ice.
I don’t think Burnham’s issue with Rillak is that the latter is a civilian, but more that she has a real issue with authority in general. Putting someone who has so much power over her, who she doesn’t have any relationship with, directly over her shoulder is a way to get her back up.
I also wonder where they’re going to take this season. They even echoed the Kirk/Spock “needs of the many” phrasing, so I feel like they could be setting it up for some sort of sacrifice, but I’m not sure who/how yet, or if they need to take it that far.
All in all, very glad it’s back, though I do wish the fall speculative fiction TV schedule was a bit more evenly distributed.
I feel as though the conflict the writers have created between Burnham and Rillak and Rillak’s warning to Burnham is being set up as a foreshadowing of something tragic that will occur later on in the season. Like perhaps Burnham takes yet another big risk and someone close to her ends up kicking the bucket as a result, or perhaps even Burnham herself.
I subscribed to CBS All Access long enough to watch Picard and ST:D seasons 1-3, then promptly dropped it like an overcooked potato. I watched the show but with no passion. I admit the ending of S3 seemed to fix many of the things I found wrong with modern Trek, so that the ships are too few and too far between, and the support system too small to support all the people they are trying to support.
I will wait until the season is complete, then subscribe for a month. I just can’t afford yet another streamer, and the show hasn’t planted it’s hooks deep enough in me.
@47: Make sure you binge on Prodigy too when you re-up your subscription. Only 5 episodes in and I think it’s the best of the most recent spin-offs so far.
Count me among those who found the first scene rather jarring. The forced comedy bit just didn’t seem to play. I mean, there are people trying to kill them and they’re frolicking around like it’s fun. Kind of made me wish one of them had gotten fragged so the other one could offer a witty one -liner about it to the crew on return.
Burnham’s uber-confidence and flawless competence throughout was, quite frankly, boring. She’s firing off orders to the bridge crew with suggestions that the crew themselves should be offering, as they often did on TNG. Instead of naming the other show Picard, they should have named this one Burnham. She’s the shit and we’re never allowed to forget it.
Although I suppose I shouldn’t complain. As others have said, this is obviously setting up for the big fall later on this season, and then we’ll be back to weepy furrowed-brow Burnham, and that’s even more insufferable.
@49/fullyfunctional: Keep in mind that Burnham and Book were teamed up as couriers for a year before Discovery arrived in the 32nd century, and presumably have been on a number of missions together in the five months since season 3. Their light rapport here was a reminder that facing mortal danger together is familiar and comfortable to them.
And I really don’t understand what some people find so objectionable about the lead character of the show being the lead character of the show.
@45….my thought is that energy weapons can vaporize the methane, you’re not getting rid of the mass, and it’s still going to hit shields. And mass, in whatever form, is going to keep pouring away….
(though I did wonder why they couldn’t have phaser-ed out a section of the station, and towed it out of danger…..
@@@@@ 50 – The problem as I see it is that Burnham obviously didn’t brief Book in any way. She turns to him and says “OK, do your thing” and he goes “Wha???” and she says “that”s why I brought you”
Also, the Captain should not be running off the bridge to fly the work bee. That’s what she has crew for. As McCoy says to Kirk in TMP “Your people know their jobs”.
I’m hoping that this season, Burnham makes a decision that blows up in her face and she doesn’t get the magic reset button pressed at the end of the episode or the season. She tries to do it all herself and it goes wrong because she’s not where she needs to be as Captain. Let her face the consequentions of her actions.
@50 Whether they’ve been together for one year or 100. I thought that scene hit a weird tone in context. It was almost like they were setting the season up to be some kind of Marvel superhero movie where there really isn’t any sense of consequences, just lots of whiz-bang special effects and witty repartee.
As for Burnham being the star of the show, that’s really not what I was objecting to. I was objecting to the heavy-handed way she was portrayed in this episode, as smarter more intuitive more instinctive than everybody else, to the point where she really doesn’t need anyone else’s input, she just tells everyone what to do and they smile back at her like wow, aren’t I fortunate to be serving under such a rockstar. And as I said, she’ll obviously receive some form of comeuppance at some point during the season- I just wish the writers weren’t quite so paint by numbers in how they’re setting all this up.
@53/fullyfunctional: “I thought that scene hit a weird tone in context. It was almost like they were setting the season up to be some kind of Marvel superhero movie where there really isn’t any sense of consequences, just lots of whiz-bang special effects and witty repartee.”
I didn’t find it weird, since it grew out of their established characterization. And yes, it set a light, adventurous tone, but is that so bad? The show’s been criticized in the past for allegedly going too dark.
And it’s not like past Trek has been great with consequences. Look at “The Changeling,” which opens with Nomad exterminating four billion sentient beings and ends with Kirk joking about how proud he is of his “son” Nomad.
Also, Marvel? No sense of consequences? Where are you getting that? The MCU is all about consequences. So many of the later films and shows have been driven by the consequences of previous events like the Chitauri Invasion, the fall of SHIELD, the destruction of Sokovia, and the Blip.
Why is nobody talking about Book’s eventual dimension shift and later life as Shepard Book, shipping on Serenity?
The witty repartee wouldn’t be so bad if every exchange of “comedy” dialogue didn’t sound like Robert Downey Jr.’s patented banter. Ugh. That man and Marvel have a lot to answer for.
@56/Shaky: If you think Robert Downey Jr. invented witty banter, you really need to catch up on the preceding 75 or so years of movie history.
Oh dear lord no, I’m talking about the particular way RDJ delivers his banter. I hear it in nearly every comedic exchange now. Everybody’s got that snarky, babbling, self-aware Marvel tongue, and it’s distracting. And a bit boring.
I should add that I’ve heard real professional comedians and comedy writers comment on this subject. So yeah, it’s a thing.
Oh, is it a thing?
Yeah, it’s a thing.
Quick side note, be sure to tell me about these things beforehand. I should be in on the things.
You mean banter?
Is that what we’re doing?
Kinda grinds the scene to a halt, doesn’t it?
Yeah.
We might want to try to come up with clever dialogue instead of repeating this same formula.
We might.
@58/Shaky: Well, it just seemed like your usual banter to me. Given that it was two people in a seemingly hopeless situation, complete with jumping off a cliff, I was more reminded of Butch and Sundance, if anything.
I saw the cliff scene more as a riff on the opening of Into Darkness. After all, people have been jump off of cliffs in the movies long before Butch and Sundance. And with the “Why is there always a cliff, it also winks at Scott’s landing in the planet in Beyond as well as the launching of the Franklin and even young Kirk’s driving the car off the cliff in the first movie.
And why didn’t the butterfly people just use a different power source for their satellites, like fusion? They just flew along like drunken moths until Burnham came along to save them?
@61: “After all, people have been jump off of cliffs in the movies long before Butch and Sundance.”
That’s exactly my point. Everything has many antecedents much older than just whatever recent thing we might be reminded of. The history is so much deeper than any single reference.
@58 — exactly. A snarky weak-sauce comedy routine that didn’t fit the characters, by actors who don’t have the chops for that kind of thing, that struck a false note in the context of the series as a whole.
@63/fully: Humor is subjective, but I wouldn’t say it was out of character. As I said, it was a reminder that Burnham and Book have been adventuring together like this for over a year and a half at this point, so this is natural and comfortable to them. I think the idea was to show that they’ve gotten complacent and overconfident about the dangers they faced together, the pride that goes before the fall, with Kwejian’s destruction knocking them back down again — and also to set a light tone for the audience so that the tragedy at the end would hit harder. So not a false note, but a deliberately contrasting note that served a purpose in the larger context.
The next Black lead of a live-action Trek series will have to single-handedly defeat the Q continuum and the Borg Collective, and travel back four billion years– alone– to ensure the Big Bang happens.
Then they’ll get to be a Captain.
Well, I gotta say I loved seeing Michael– excuse me, Captain Burnham– in the center seat at last. Burham comports herself well in command, and there was never a doubt in my mind who the Captain was when Burnham was on-screen. Is she perfect? Not by a long shot, but damn does she kick all the ass.
I really like President Riliak (did I spell that right?). I reckon it would take no one other than the President of the United Federation of Planets to call Burnham on her tendency to leap before looking.
Name one Trek Captain who got every decision right, though. I’ll wait.
I loved the opening. A beautiful Discovery spin on the Star Trek Beyond opening.
And Archer’s Theme at the Academy opening ceremony? Very nice touch.
Everybody– our whole crew– shines here. I loved seeing our bridge and senior officers (are they still called that?) comfortable and confident. Lt. Cmdrs. Owosekun and Detmer continue to be a perfect duo, and even (Lieutenant Commander?) Rhys gets his moment in the big chair. I do hope we see more of Stamets and Culber, and newly-minted Ensign Adira Tal must have made Lieutenant Tilly smile inside.
And I’m always glad to see Admiral Vance, and happy that’s he’s reunited with his family.
Also grateful to look in on Kaminar, and see the Kelpiens and the Ba’ul coexisting peacefully. I’m always instantly happy when Saru is onscreen.
As for the threat of the season, I just don’t get bent out of shape about these parts of the show as some people; it’s just Discovery’s thing, I guess. My interest is how it affects the characters. I do wish they hadn’t felt the need to destroy Book’s homeworld, but we’ll see how things unfold
I really enjoyed this season-opener overall. “She’s the Captain.” It feels good to say that again.
@65/DanteHopkins: According to the novel Indistinguishable from Magic, Geordi LaForge (and Scotty) already played a part in bringing about the Big Bang.
Also, why exclude animated series? Both Lower Decks and Prodigy have Black lead actors (Tawny Newsome and Brett Gray). Surely they’re just as worthy of acknowledgment.
The president is named Laira Rillak.
“Name one Trek Captain who got every decision right, though. I’ll wait.”
Name one Trek captain who didn’t occasionally have to contend with an authority figure second-guessing their command decisions. Well, maybe Janeway.
@66 CLB: I focused on the live-action series because Avery Brooks and Sonequa Martin-Green have both had to be the face of their respective Trek series, not start out their series as captains for whatever reasons, and their characters have had to jump through various hoops to get that fourth pip (in Burnham’s case, pips back at all). Pike on Strange New Worlds will be a Captain from episode one.
Tawny Newsome and Brett Gray have characters who aren’t Starfleet Captains and have seemingly no desire to be; I didn’t include them for that reason.
According to the novel Indistinguishable from Magic, Geordi LaForge (and Scotty) already played a part in bringing about the Big Bang.
This made me smile, because of course they did.
@67/Dante: “their characters have had to jump through various hoops to get that fourth pip”
I wouldn’t say that’s true of Sisko. He didn’t jump through any hoops; he was just a commander for three seasons and then they abruptly said “Poof, he’s a captain now.” It wasn’t something he’d been pursuing; after all, he’d been the commanding officer all along and was still the commanding officer afterward, so adding that pip was basically just a technicality. It’s different for Burnham, where she had to rise to the position of commanding officer, a meaningful change in her role.
“Tawny Newsome and Brett Gray have characters who aren’t Starfleet Captains and have seemingly no desire to be; I didn’t include them for that reason.”
Dal R’El literally appointed himself captain of the Protostar at the first opportunity. So he certainly has the desire to be the captain, even if he doesn’t have much interest yet in the discipline and values that go with it.
According to ST Beyond, in order to advance in rank, you have to apply like Kirk was talking about becoming an Admiral. Probably just a simple form you send to starlet stains “I am interested in being promoted to the rank of <Rank>”
A good season opener! I had many of the same nitpicks as others – a bit overstuffed; we didn’t need to flip between the action and Saru’s scenes so much (could have saved them til later), the camera-work was disorienting, and the bridge flamethrowers make about as much sense as why there are rocks inside 24th century consoles. But overall I was very happy at the show’s “back to business” kind of direction. While I appreciate that it’s not in this show’s nature to dedicate too much time to the minutia of rebuilding the Federation every episode – there’s clearly a galaxy-threatening gravitic anomaly to stop which will take up most of their time – it felt good to see the crew in action on a “routine” repair, and then rescue, mission.
I was pleasantly surprised by the character of President Rillak. Burnham comes right out and says that she doesn’t like her and thinks she’s being a careerist politician – and she’s part Cardassian, which I think was designed to raise red flags for some viewers – but really her views are eminently reasonable, pragmatic and sensible. Burnham’s hero complex is in her personnel file at this point, it’s so well known – and her point about Burnham’s various heroic exploits being no substitute for the hard experience of captaining a starship was very well made. It illustrates how circumstantial Burnham’s rise to the captain’s chair has really been. Would she really be in that seat if she hadn’t saved the universe, time-travelled 900 years and solved the Burn mystery? And do those things really qualify her to be a Starfleet Captain?
From a sartorial perspective, the change in 32nd century Starfleet uniforms is a welcome one. I can’t have been the only one who watched the montage at the end of the last episode and thought “eww, everyone in grey?” – it was a jarring change from the navy-blue 23rd century uniforms the crew had been wearing. So changing them to be basically the same style but in the traditional Starfleet primary colours was the perfect course correction. I do wish that Burnham had been wearing her typical duty uniform much earlier in the episode, so that it could have been introduced by the show’s lead character and not by flashes of the bridge crew in yellow, though.
Butterfly race – you belong in Dr. Who.
The Kweijan / Book scenario is all that looks promising in this season thus far, as his character is warranted to feel very emotional over this loss.
Invoking Kobayashi Maru felt like a fan service reach, “see Trekkies, it’s Trek because we included a classic Trek thing!” Hollow, shallow attempt. Also, if you want to skip over Burnham for higher command, do so because she STILL cries at every possible moment, which is increasingly less believable given her supposed experience to this point (can you imagine how much more powerful the performance and general feel would be if the central character, raised by a Vulcan mind you, wasn’t constantly tearful and wide eyed, and choking up when interacting with others, but actually had composure and could deliver a line without looking like a toddler who just fell and is about to decide whether or not they want to cry – what is this they’re going for, some nearly crippling disorder which features spontaneous bouts of extreme empathy inappropriate to context? Is that your idea of a star fleet officer?), not because she tries to use all of the tools she has to resolve crisis and repeatedly succeeds. Moreover, she’s experienced a lot of death she was responsible for, and she’s successfully moved on. This entire concept of her inability to accept loss coming from the president – that’s a lazy writer’s approach to injecting instant character conflict, which is also no doubt heavily telegraphing the rest of her arc this season. Here’s a preview – she’ll try to harden herself only to realize, in a critical moment, that crying is her greatest strength.
As for the death of the guy on the station – classic case of complete disconnect with the audience’s reaction – they cared way too much about random obtuse guy – the dramatic slow mo sequence and heavy music was way over done for a character we have, oh, negative amounts of emotional investment in, leaving me rolling my eyes over how continuously intent they are on trying to make this show emotionally impactful – it comes across as hammy and maudlin, almost every time. So disappointed. I thought the direction might shift with her finally in command. More of the same.
Lastly, yes – the audio drives me insane. Even the blu ray doesn’t have advanced coding – it’s basically straight stereo, and the high end of EVERYTHING is clipped – all the dialogue, sound effects, has a persistent crush/hiss at the high end. I thought it was Paramount+, but it’s evidently the sound engineering judging by the blu ray quality. Yet, it’s been nominated for sound editing three years running?
Quoth Transceiver: “they cared way too much about random obtuse guy”
Nonsense, and that you’d think so is truly disheartening. We’re talking about the death of a sentient being — one that Tilly was specifically tasked with saving, along with everyone else on the station. That should NEVER be something that people would be unaffected by. No death should ever be written off or dismissed, and saying that someone cares too much about someone dying is a fierce indictment of how cavalierly death is treated in far too much fiction, and that’s just gross and disgusting.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@72/krad: The way the station commander was handled here reminded me of the way episodic TV used to be done, when getting us to care about a guest character we’d never met before — like Charlie Evans or Edith Keeler — was the rule rather than the exception. Serialization is too often used as a crutch. There’s value in telling a complete story within a single episode, and good writing can get us to care about a character within a short time.
@krad: “No death should ever be written off or dismissed, and saying that someone cares too much about someone dying is a fierce indictment of how cavalierly death is treated in far too much fiction, and that’s just gross and disgusting.”
I like that statement a lot. If you want to preserve your sanity, please stay away from the last episode of Doctor Who Flux. It has cavalier disregard for life times 7 billion.
@72 Krad – There’s a difference between cavalier disregard for life and treating the death of a transient bit part character as though it was the death of a main cast member through the use of exaggerated dramatic production techniques. Further, he was a pretty dislikable character, which gives the audience very little to latch onto in order to be taken along on that ride with Tilly. The drama in this show is consistently heavy handed, perhaps due more to choices in direction and on stage tone than in writing, and the treatment of this scene encapsulates that for me. It’s the kind of scene that immediately kills all immersion for me. For a battle hardened, highly trained, specially selected secret ops team, the Discovery crew often acts like anything but.
@75/Transceiver: “There’s a difference between cavalier disregard for life and treating the death of a transient bit part character as though it was the death of a main cast member through the use of exaggerated dramatic production techniques.”
Again, look at how episodic TV was done in the ’60s or ’70s. We were supposed to care about Charlie Evans or Edith Keeler or Matt Decker or Miranda Jones as much as we cared about the main cast. It’s mistaken to dismiss the value of guest characters, or to say that building a story around making us care for a guest character is somehow artificial. It’s just more fashionable these days to focus on story arcs rather than standalones. That doesn’t make it superior.
If anything, I feel it’s detrimental to modern TV series that they tend to focus more on the main characters’ problems than the guest characters. It can make the main characters come off as self-absorbed and narcissistic. It used to be that heroes were defined by their commitment to helping other people with their problems. These days they’re mostly just fixated on their own personal problems, and the guest stars and cases-of-the-week are just there to be coincidentally relevant to whatever the main characters are dealing with. And frequently the problems the heroes try to fix are the direct result of messes they created, so if anything they’re doing more harm than good.
“Further, he was a pretty dislikable character”
I didn’t think so. Maybe he seemed that way at first, but he turned out to be more sympathetic.
Transceiver: Again, any death should matter, regardless of the character’s place in the credits, so I loudly and aggressively reject the premise that the death of a main character necessarily means more or less than the death of a guest. I also disagree that he was unlikeable, but even if he was, so what? So it’s okay for unlikeable people to die? That’s still gross and disgusting. And when you’re sent to save lives, and one of the lives is lost, that should matter.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s not that his life didn’t matter or that the main cast reacted out of character. I’m in the middle of the episode in which Tilly is on a training expedition – a similar death occurs in that episode, and the audience isn’t given swelling string music and a slow motion montage to punctuate it – these classical film cues are meant to enhance the viewer’s emotional response and underscore the importance of the loss they have witnessed. In the latter episode I’m referencing, we’re instead given silence, space, and a moment of pause after the death we witness. We’re allowed to infer our own empathy on the scene, instead of being led to feel manufactured weight, and it hits the mark. I think it does matter that the guy in this episode had no lasting involvement in the plot, has not been referenced again, cracked under pressure, held everyone at gun point, and generally delayed the rescue mission and therefore put the lives of everyone involved in greater danger. Had he been at all relatable, it wouldn’t have felt quite so off when everyone was devastated that he didn’t survive, as though he was their dear friend of 3 seasons of television. It was a weird choice of direction.
@78/Transceiver: “I’m in the middle of the episode in which Tilly is on a training expedition – a similar death occurs in that episode, and the audience isn’t given swelling string music and a slow motion montage to punctuate it – these classical film cues are meant to enhance the viewer’s emotional response and underscore the importance of the loss they have witnessed. In the latter episode I’m referencing, we’re instead given silence, space, and a moment of pause after the death we witness. We’re allowed to infer our own empathy on the scene, instead of being led to feel manufactured weight, and it hits the mark.”
Whereas I thought that death was handled terribly, just a gratuitous throwaway of a non-entity placeholder character whom we didn’t know a thing about and who was forgotten after that scene. Not to mention how ridiculous it is that 32nd-century medicine couldn’t do more to save his life, though I guess the same applies here.
It doesn’t matter how the actual moment of death is handled if we don’t know the character well enough to care. You called Nalas a “bit part,” but that’s a misuse of the term. A bit part is a tiny role, a walk-on with a maximum of five lines. It’s only one step up from an extra. Lt. Callum, the shuttle pilot killed in “All is Possible,” was a bit part; in fact, the actor was billed as “Nick Name,” which is obviously a joke credit, underlining the throwaway nature of the role. But Commander Nalas is a full guest star with a personality and a backstory and a relationship with Tilly. There’s just no sense in comparing them.
“I think it does matter that the guy in this episode had no lasting involvement in the plot, has not been referenced again”
Edith Keeler was never referenced again. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t important. The value of a story is in the story itself. Its connections to other stories are secondary. It doesn’t matter if the pieces connect to each other if they aren’t individually worthwhile.
@79 CLB
I’m not concerned with the (I’d say) slight semantic differences between bit part and 1 time guest star who had a handful more lines than the textbook definition of bit part describes.
Edith Keeler was far better realized as a character, and that’s my point. What did Nalas dream of? What did he believe in? Stand for? Where did he live? Was he kind? What did his death mean in terms of the concepts that died a little bit in other characters along with him, or were strengthened in them when he passed? In the viewer? Did his death literally change the entire course of human history? You can answer all of those questions for Edith and none of them for Nalas – they did the narrative work necessary to make us care about Edith, but they did a slapdash job on Nalas and tried to make up for it with a sudden burst of heavy handed and cliched techniques designed to pull your heartstrings. You have to put the narrative work in to invest people in a character – a slow mo grief montage doesn’t make up for rushed writing. Her episode was about pacifism, the personal cost of choice, the life of one for the life of many. What was this episode about? Seasoned military leadership being unprepared for choices that aren’t novel to them?
Do you think Nalas’ story was worthwhile? What was the message? Sometimes a guy is so ill suited for his job he might make a dire situation infinitely worse and almost get hundreds of people killed in the process? His death was supposed to be the emotional lynch pin holding up the idea that Burnham can’t accept any loss, and that she was almost “that guy” who gets every one killed too, because of her unwillingness to make any sacrifice. It’s not even an analogy for her situation, it’s just a nested version of the same story told a second time within itself, both unfolding simultaneously 1:1, with no edifying differences in judgement between the two.
It’s supposed to be her first test of leadership, and somewhat of a shocking failure, but she’s also no stranger to leadership, and there are a host of deaths and sacrifices already in her wake. It just doesn’t work on so many levels for me.