Star Trek

[Sparky Prime]

CBS put the first episode of season 2 of Discovery on Youtube, for free.

So "Brother"....

Spoiler

Picking up right where season 1 left off.... Discovery responds to a distress call from the Enterprise. The crew reports all of the Enterprise's systems are offline except for life support (despite the fact the Enterprise flew in on its own power to greet Discovery, and sent a distress call, garbled as it was). Ensign Tilly comes to the bridge and suggests they switch to mores code, and the Enterprise signals Captain Pike and two officers (one pointed out to be a science officer) will be beaming over (yet another system that isn't offline apparently). We get some visuals of the interior of Discovery showing that apparently the crew is working on reconstructing the interior of the ship. Tilly says something about being in charge of converting engineering to a standard configuration to remove the spore drive.... But this level of work looks more like something they'd take care of at a Starbase, not while the ship is in operation.

Michael is disappointed the science officer is not Spock as she'd anticipated. Pike informs them with the Enterprise out of action, he has been ordered to take command of Discovery to investigate these mysterious red signals. The Enterprise computers went haywire whenever they tried to scan them, leaving the ship completely disabled (yet somehow made it almost back to Earth on its own power?). Discovery departs to the closest and only remaining signal they'd detected. Along the way Sarek talks to Michael, where they both say they haven't talked to Spock in years, with Sarek picking up that Michael is not telling him something, but he doesn't press her about it. But instead of a red...whatever, they drop out of warp into a field of asteroids (their sensors couldn't detect that beforehand?) They quickly discover a crashed Starfleet medical frigate, but their arrival has acted like an opposite magnet to the asteroid, pushing it towards a pulsar it will impact with in about 5 hours. At this point, Sarek apparently returns to Vulcan on a shuttle.

Unable to get a transporter lock, Michael and the Enterprise crew take "landing pods" through the asteroids (where the science officer is killed while refusing to listen to Michael) and Michael is forced to save Pike after his pod is damaged as well. Inside the ship, they find an engineer who has kept several critically injured officers alive because they're all "basically machines" and she can read ( pretty sure you need to know a bit more than just what's in a text book to be able to pull off what she did). Michael quickly repairs the ship's transporters, and they evacuate the ship, but she ends up locked out of the room. While running to the transport enhancers they set up as a backup, she's injured and sees a red angel... which disappears as Pike returns (somehow) to save her. Back on Discovery, they take a chunk of the asteroid with them after Tilly noticed the spores reacted to the gravity field the asteroid gives off. Discovery returns to Enterprise (which is being towed to a starbase) and Pike lets Michael knows he and Saru will have "joint custody" of Discovery as they investigate the red signals. Michael asks to see Spock, and Pike admits Spock took leave. Investigating his quarters, Michael listens to his last personal log, in which Spock says he has been having nightmares, in the form of the red signals...

So I do have to say this was an improvement over the season 1 premier I saw on tv last year. Although it still has many flaws... I don't understand why they insist on doing prequels like this, yet giving them technology they didn't even have in the 24th century. Like this anti-gravity thing they used to keep the asteroid suspended in the shuttle bay.... It starts out as this tiny device that unfolded and mass shifts into this much bigger device. I also heard the Transformers G1 transformation sound effect while the thing was moving. Most of the characters I either didn't really get to know or didn't like. They do a roll call on the bridge, which I have to wonder if it was the first time several of them were actually named on screen. Other than pushing buttons, they don't really do much. Tilly and Michael were both really annoying to me. Tilly, having gone "made with power" feels like she was over stepping her authority. And Michael is basically the same as she was in season 1, thinking she's always right (although unfortunately, she's proven right every time in this episode as well) and even butts heads with the Captain about a course of action. At least she didn't mutiny and cause a war this time (which she apparently got rewarded for in the end, even having her rank restored). Pike was a great addition to the show I have to say. Easily the best character in this episode.

I really don't get why no one asked the obvious questions about Spock in this episode, other than to artificially prolong the drama. Michael says early on to Pike that she expected to see Spock, only for Pike to tell her to set her expectations low. What kind of a reply is that even? It's not until the end of the episode, when she explicitly asks to see Spock, that Pike tells her he hasn't even seen Spock in a while, because he's been on leave. Why wouldn't Pike have brought that up earlier? The same thing with whatever happened between Spock and Michael. Sarek goes out of his way to point out he can tell Michael isn't telling him something, which she does say is her fault, but... They really don't go into it beyond that, which seems odd they wouldn't actually talk about it when they'd brought it up.

[andersonh1]

CBS put the first episode of season 2 of Discovery on Youtube, for free.

So "Brother"....

Spoiler

Picking up right where season 1 left off.... Discovery responds to a distress call from the Enterprise. The crew reports all of the Enterprise's systems are offline except for life support (despite the fact the Enterprise flew in on its own power to greet Discovery, and sent a distress call, garbled as it was). Ensign Tilly comes to the bridge and suggests they switch to mores code, and the Enterprise signals Captain Pike and two officers (one pointed out to be a science officer) will be beaming over (yet another system that isn't offline apparently). We get some visuals of the interior of Discovery showing that apparently the crew is working on reconstructing the interior of the ship. Tilly says something about being in charge of converting engineering to a standard configuration to remove the spore drive.... But this level of work looks more like something they'd take care of at a Starbase, not while the ship is in operation.

Michael is disappointed the science officer is not Spock as she'd anticipated. Pike informs them with the Enterprise out of action, he has been ordered to take command of Discovery to investigate these mysterious red signals. The Enterprise computers went haywire whenever they tried to scan them, leaving the ship completely disabled (yet somehow made it almost back to Earth on its own power?). Discovery departs to the closest and only remaining signal they'd detected. Along the way Sarek talks to Michael, where they both say they haven't talked to Spock in years, with Sarek picking up that Michael is not telling him something, but he doesn't press her about it. But instead of a red...whatever, they drop out of warp into a field of asteroids (their sensors couldn't detect that beforehand?) They quickly discover a crashed Starfleet medical frigate, but their arrival has acted like an opposite magnet to the asteroid, pushing it towards a pulsar it will impact with in about 5 hours. At this point, Sarek apparently returns to Vulcan on a shuttle.

Unable to get a transporter lock, Michael and the Enterprise crew take "landing pods" through the asteroids (where the science officer is killed while refusing to listen to Michael) and Michael is forced to save Pike after his pod is damaged as well. Inside the ship, they find an engineer who has kept several critically injured officers alive because they're all "basically machines" and she can read ( pretty sure you need to know a bit more than just what's in a text book to be able to pull off what she did). Michael quickly repairs the ship's transporters, and they evacuate the ship, but she ends up locked out of the room. While running to the transport enhancers they set up as a backup, she's injured and sees a red angel... which disappears as Pike returns (somehow) to save her. Back on Discovery, they take a chunk of the asteroid with them after Tilly noticed the spores reacted to the gravity field the asteroid gives off. Discovery returns to Enterprise (which is being towed to a starbase) and Pike lets Michael knows he and Saru will have "joint custody" of Discovery as they investigate the red signals. Michael asks to see Spock, and Pike admits Spock took leave. Investigating his quarters, Michael listens to his last personal log, in which Spock says he has been having nightmares, in the form of the red signals...

So I do have to say this was an improvement over the season 1 premier I saw on tv last year. Although it still has many flaws... I don't understand why they insist on doing prequels like this, yet giving them technology they didn't even have in the 24th century. Like this anti-gravity thing they used to keep the asteroid suspended in the shuttle bay.... It starts out as this tiny device that unfolded and mass shifts into this much bigger device. I also heard the Transformers G1 transformation sound effect while the thing was moving. Most of the characters I either didn't really get to know or didn't like. They do a roll call on the bridge, which I have to wonder if it was the first time several of them were actually named on screen. Other than pushing buttons, they don't really do much. Tilly and Michael were both really annoying to me. Tilly, having gone "made with power" feels like she was over stepping her authority. And Michael is basically the same as she was in season 1, thinking she's always right (although unfortunately, she's proven right every time in this episode as well) and even butts heads with the Captain about a course of action. At least she didn't mutiny and cause a war this time (which she apparently got rewarded for in the end, even having her rank restored). Pike was a great addition to the show I have to say. Easily the best character in this episode.

I really don't get why no one asked the obvious questions about Spock in this episode, other than to artificially prolong the drama. Michael says early on to Pike that she expected to see Spock, only for Pike to tell her to set her expectations low. What kind of a reply is that even? It's not until the end of the episode, when she explicitly asks to see Spock, that Pike tells her he hasn't even seen Spock in a while, because he's been on leave. Why wouldn't Pike have brought that up earlier? The same thing with whatever happened between Spock and Michael. Sarek goes out of his way to point out he can tell Michael isn't telling him something, which she does say is her fault, but... They really don't go into it beyond that, which seems odd they wouldn't actually talk about it when they'd brought it up.

This episode is free to watch at the moment, but I only had time to watch about 10 minutes so far. I do like the guy playing Pike. He's not the moody, troubled Pike from The Cage, but he's a better match, appearance-wise, for Jeffrey Hunter than Bruce Greenwood was in the movies. Mojave gets a mention, so the writers have done their homework on the character. If I get a chance to watch the rest of the episode I'll offer some more thoughts, but I agree with you that a prequel that looks a lot more advanced even than the 24th century shows makes little sense. This can't be in the main timeline. I tend to think of it as a third continuity, closer to the original than the new movies, but still not the same.

[Sparky Prime]

This episode is free to watch at the moment, but I only had time to watch about 10 minutes so far. I do like the guy playing Pike. He's not the moody, troubled Pike from The Cage, but he's a better match, appearance-wise, for Jeffrey Hunter than Bruce Greenwood was in the movies. Mojave gets a mention, so the writers have done their homework on the character. If I get a chance to watch the rest of the episode I'll offer some more thoughts, but I agree with you that a prequel that looks a lot more advanced even than the 24th century shows makes little sense. This can't be in the main timeline. I tend to think of it as a third continuity, closer to the original than the new movies, but still not the same.

Yeah, I tend to think of it as another continuity as well, because despite the producers assurances, there's just too many canon breaks to consider it part of the Prime universe.

I found it interesting the graphics showing the Enterprise's design specs on the Discovery bridge didn't match the dialog. Michael mentions 203 lifesigns on the Enterprise, matching the crew compliment mentioned in "The Cage", but the screens say the crew compliment is 430 (which is what it was when Kirk was in command) with 429 on board (indicating the missing Spock). The struts of the warp nacelles are also straight on the graphics, rather than swept back like we see for the actual ship.

I also have to point out, I don't like the warp effect in this show... At one point they show this beam of energy traveling through space, and the camera goes into it revealing it's the Discovery traveling at warp. Warp drive is travel through subspace, it shouldn't manifest as a beam of energy through normal space. And this makes warp drive look more like a transwarp conduit, rather than a warp field forming a bubble of subspace around the ship.

Oh, and they mentioned that the Enterprise, having been on a 5 year exploration mission, was kept out of the war with the Klingons because they wouldn't have been able to make it back in time anyway. And that Starfleet was keeping her as a last resort.... Even though they mentioned the Federation was on the verge of loosing the war and that the Klingons had conquered 20% of the Federation and lost a third of their fleet. Kinda think they already passed the point the Enterprise should have been recalled. Yet, the Enterprise did receive the colorful new uniforms. Which seems odd considering Discovery literally just left Earth. How does the Enterprise have new style uniforms when they've been on their 5 year mission, apparently out so far they wouldn't have made it back in time to fight in the war, yet Discovery doesn't? Pike even switches (back?) to the Discovery uniform at the end of the episode.

A couple of interesting reference in the episode... Staments mentioned a former colleague on Enterprise who is an exobotanist, which could be a reference to Sulu. And the transporter officer on Discovery appears to be wearing a Visor somewhat similar to Geordi's.

[andersonh1]

I watched the entire episode. It's the first episode of Discovery that I've seen, and there were things I liked and disliked about it.
- Visually it's very impressive, from the shot outside of Discovery where we can see Burnham and the other crew member through the windows to the drop through the asteroid debris field. It's miles ahead of 90s Trek in what they can put on screen and the type of action they can portray.
- By the same token, sometimes the action is very frenetic and there's so much going on that it's hard to know what to look at on screen. The tone is very much that of the new Trek movies rather than any of the old series.
- The same goes for the aliens all through the crew, or cybernetic humans, or whatever. Rather than a mostly human crew with an alien or two, there are far more aliens that pop up. I'm guessing the makeup and visual effects needed are just easier to do now than they used to be.
- Pike comes across very well. Anson Mount plays the character as much less serious and burdened than Jeffrey Hunter's portrayal, and I guess it's easy to think that we're seeing Pike on a very bad day following the battle and the loss of some of his crew members in "The Cage", and here he's had time to recover. He's willing to listen to his crew, take risks to save lives, and come back for Burnham when she's left behind. He's an old school captain like Kirk, leading from the front and taking risks for the crew. I liked that quite a bit.
- I knew Pike's science officer was going to die when he did his own thing traveling through the asteroid field. Sure enough, he dies mid-sentence. I thought the scene where the crack spreads across the window and Pike watches it as it moves was nicely done.
- It was good to hear "landing party" again. I never have liked "away team".
- Spock's quarters draw some inspiration from the original series, though the little bit we see of the Enterprise looks more like the TOS movies than the series.
- I can't say I really like the uniforms, or the design of Discovery
- I'm very used to episodic Trek, so a story arc over the course of the season feels odd to me, even though I'm used to that format on modern TV series.
- I cannot buy that this is set in the original timeline, as I said a post or two back. There are just too many differences.
- similarly, I have a hard time buying that after all these years and all these Trek stories, we're just now learning that Spock has an adoptive human sister. I did like the portrayal of Sarek as a bit warmer and more caring than Vulcans are sometimes shown to be. But like Sybok in Star Trek 5, having Spock suddenly have a sibling we never knew about lacks credibility.

Overall, it wasn't a bad episode, but I can't say I was really drawn in either. The action was very good, but a lot of the characters were ciphers. This doesn't feel like Star Trek that adds to what we've seen before, it feels like it's off in its own little corner doing its own thing, and while I might watch a free episode like this one, I'm not subscribing to CBS just to see this series. Enjoyed it, but I'm fine with not seeing more.

[Sparky Prime]

I've read some reviews of the latest episode, "Point of Light", and how they're trying to fix some of the issues they've created.... It sounds like some of the laziest writing.

The Klingon's introduce the D-7 battle cruiser as a symbol of the united houses. Which admittedly, I think would be an interesting idea, if each House had their own starship design aesthetics, and it all changed when they decided to unite their Houses into a single military. But the problem with that is that it really doesn't fit with whats been established already. We saw traditional Klingon ship designs in Enterprise and save for the ship of the Dead, every House seemed to share the same weird ship designs in the first season of Discovery, they didn't have unique ships to their Houses.

Burnham talks to Tyler at some point and says that she sees the Klingons are regrowing their hair following the war. And apparently that's it. Just that one line is supposed to handwave away why the Klingons look so different in Discovery. Never mind that we've never seen Klingons shave their heads for any other war in any other series, and they were all already bald in the first episode, before the war started. Some of their skulls have actually shrunk as well, becoming more rounded in season 2. And still no mention of the augment virus.

And they have a scene where Pike calls the head of a starbase on a viewscreen, where the guy says only Pike and his grandma use viewscreens instead of holograms. Feels like kind of a backhanded slight to the fans if you ask me, but in any case, these writers really don't get it. It's a cool idea to use hologram communication. Something we've even seen before in DS9. But that's the issue. It's something that wasn't introduced in Star Trek until 100 years after Discovery. Making holo-communication seem common place in this time frame of the canon, while viewscreens is an old technology that only old people and a few quirky people still use, is only compounding the mistake.

And apparently Section 31 has their own ships. Or at least 1 that this episode showed. Aren't they supposed to be a covert organization that works in secret within the Federation? Wouldn't having their own ships kinda blow their cover?

[Sparky Prime]

In the latest episode of Discovery, "If Memory Serves", they use footage from the original pilot of TOS, "The Cage". Interestingly, they did not update any of the visuals from this footage, which means they showed the Enterprise as it originally appeared in TOS, rather than Discovery's redesign. Which personally I'm conflicted about. On the one hand, I think it's a great that they acknowledge those events by showing it with the footage from the original series, when Discovery has made so many mistakes in regard to canon. But on the other hand, I feel the creators are telling us the visuals don't matter, which I don't agree with. Either they need to stick with their redesigns or they should have stuck to the original design in the first place. Which personally, I'd prefer the original design simply because the previous series, TNG (Relics), DS9 (Trials and Tribble-ations) and Enterprise (In a Mirror, Darkly) did, maintaining the continuity with that aesthetic rather than trying to update it. To me, this is one of the biggest mistakes I feel the creators have done, setting Discovery as a prequel to TOS, but wanting to update it at the same time, which only serves to break from the established continuity that they've so faithfully upheld for decades.

[andersonh1]

In the latest episode of Discovery, "If Memory Serves", they use footage from the original pilot of TOS, "The Cage". Interestingly, they did not update any of the visuals from this footage, which means they showed the Enterprise as it originally appeared in TOS, rather than Discovery's redesign. Which personally I'm conflicted about. On the one hand, I think it's a great that they acknowledge those events by showing it with the footage from the original series, when Discovery has made so many mistakes in regard to canon. But on the other hand, I feel the creators are telling us the visuals don't matter, which I don't agree with. Either they need to stick with their redesigns or they should have stuck to the original design in the first place. Which personally, I'd prefer the original design simply because the previous series, TNG (Relics), DS9 (Trials and Tribble-ations) and Enterprise (In a Mirror, Darkly) did, maintaining the continuity with that aesthetic rather than trying to update it. To me, this is one of the biggest mistakes I feel the creators have done, setting Discovery as a prequel to TOS, but wanting to update it at the same time, which only serves to break from the established continuity that they've so faithfully upheld for decades.

What part of "The Cage" did they show? I was not interested in Discovery, but the use of Pike has made me more curious about this season. In a way, that's a shame, that the show has failed to interest me in its original characters, and it's only the use of old characters that catches my attention.

And yes, I agree with you that I'd rather they kept the aesthetic of the old show whenever they flash back to the original series era. 90s Trek did that very nicely. We have decades of more colorful and excessive fashion in the real world (hello, 1970s!), and there's no reason the fictional world of Star Trek couldn't have the same thing. I think the less colorful bridge from "The Cage" still holds up fairly well, all things considered, and Enterprise made the original series bridge look quite good. And the original Enterprise looks great in CGI... that remains a beautifully designed ship 50 years later.

[Sparky Prime]

What part of "The Cage" did they show? I was not interested in Discovery, but the use of Pike has made me more curious about this season. In a way, that's a shame, that the show has failed to interest me in its original characters, and it's only the use of old characters that catches my attention.

It recaps the Enterprise getting a distress call from a survey ship, leading them to Talos IV. They beam down and see the singing plants. They meet Vina. Spock declares it's a trap. Pike asks Vina if she's real and if there is any way to prevent the Talosians from using their abilities against him. She has a picnic with Pike saying she can't help but love him. And finally she tells him she can't leave with him, as the scene cuts from Hunter Pike to Mount Pike on the Discovery bridge.

[andersonh1]

What part of "The Cage" did they show? I was not interested in Discovery, but the use of Pike has made me more curious about this season. In a way, that's a shame, that the show has failed to interest me in its original characters, and it's only the use of old characters that catches my attention.

It recaps the Enterprise getting a distress call from a survey ship, leading them to Talos IV. They beam down and see the singing plants. They meet Vina. Spock declares it's a trap. Pike asks Vina if she's real and if there is any way to prevent the Talosians from using their abilities against him. She has a picnic with Pike saying she can't help but love him. And finally she tells him she can't leave with him, as the scene cuts from Hunter Pike to Mount Pike on the Discovery bridge.

I found the clip on YouTube. It's nice to see the original footage from the Cage and the events of that episode revisited.

[Sparky Prime]

Sigh...

Spoiler

Discovery has made a mess of Section 31. Apparently, Section 31 is Starfleet's worst kept secret in the 23rd century, as they carry their own unique Starfleet badges (which double as comm badges no less), and no one on Discovery is surprised by this either. Everyone seems to already know exactly who/what Section 31 is. They've even got their own fleet of ships, equipped with stealth holographic technology that can make the ship appear as an asteroid. They also have a space station they use as headquarters, despite Sloan saying in DS9 that they have no headquarters, no physical buildings or offices. Granted, Discovery destroys the space station, but still, it goes against everything Enterprise and DS9 established about the organization. And rather than an independent branch that answers to no one in the Federation, in Discovery, they're actually run by several Starfleet Admirals. Oh, and they use mines to protect the space station, which apparently the Federation finds immoral, with the Discovery crew shocked they'd use such weapons. Why? We've never seen Starfleet having any moral misgivings about using mines before.

Apparently the reason Spock and Michael haven't talked in years is because she was concerned about a Vulcan terrorist group known as "Logic Extremist" who had been targeting her. So she told Spock he was a weird freak half-breed that isn't capable of love when they were children. The way she talked about it in the season premier, I expected something... more than that.

The Red Angel has been revealed. Apparently it's a time travel suit Section 31 created. Turns out, Michael's parents were both actually Section 31 operatives that had been working on the time travel suit. But the Klingons were also working on time travel technology at the time, and attacked their colony for the time crystal in their possession. Section 31 never got the thing to work with out the crystal, but obviously someone has. Spock figures out the variance in every appearance of the angel has been Michael Burnham (because everything in the show has to be tied to her), and so concludes she must be the Red Angel traveling back in time, to put right what once went wro... wait a minute. They set a trap for her using Michael Burnham as bait (as a grandfather paradox to force the Red Angel to save, in essence, herself). Only, surprise! It's Michael's mother. Which... Again, I have to say this is such a disappointing reveal. I mean, this just seems like a bad cliche to me to have her parents revealed as secret agents that died, only, in the "shocking twist", they faked their death (at least, her mother, but it wouldn't surprise me if her father is still alive as well). Also, (and since I haven't actually seen the episode I'm not sure if this is explained but...) how does Section 31 have access to this level of technology? They've been shown to have technology more advanced then anything else in this era.