“People of Earth”

2 stars again.

This season is just more of the same with differ Ent window Trappings. More stalling. Not much but lip service paid to world building and status of the alpha Quadrant. Earth didn’t feel alien like it should with a millennium having passed

Everything feels like mechanical contrived plotting. Nothing organic. Just a push to the next plot point or next episode

More than anything, this one reminded me of "New Eden" from last season: a potentially intriguing one-off story ("What happened to an Earth disconnected from the Federation?") that lost its potency amidst the maneuvering of the season's long-term plot pieces and character arcs.

I get that this episode needed to re-sync Burnham and the Disco crew, but it feels like that didn't leave enough time for the more interesting concepts that were hinted at. Is Earth still the utopia of centuries past behind the heavy-duty defences? Seems that way but we're just left to assume it rather than being explicitly shown. What challenges did it face in becoming self-sufficient?

Quite watchable, and I'm really loving Captain Saru, but overall it earns a shrug from me.

People of Earth
Star Trek Discovery season 3 episode 3

Mal’s review before Jammer’s


2 stars (out of 4)


“It’s so big now.”

- Owo describes a tree


This season continues to throw curve balls with its episode titles. Here, we see very few People of Earth. Actually zero people when our team is down on the planet. They should have called the episode People of near-Earth Orbit.

The title is not the only thing off about the hour.

During the opening credits there is a sketch of the vulcan hand greeting. Watching it this week I realised that the show has left the vulcans - who have played such a huge part of its backstory, with Sarak, and Spock, and Burnham herself growing up there - the show has left vulcans behind. As far as I can tell, there are no vulcans on the crew. And Michael’s new demeanour is so much more human. A nice change.

Klingons are also gone, which is also interesting given the enormous role they played in the first two seasons with the War, and Ash/Voq, the time crystals, and all the rest. No Romulans, probably. Ferengi too. Cardasians. Betazoids. Bajorans. Does Star Trek really have the courage to start from scratch?

Maybe, I thought, they really did want to start with a clean slate. The first two episodes this season did a decent job of washing out the bad taste of seasons 1 & 2, and making room for something fresh and new.

And then we reach Earth. Or rather the Solar System. And planetary defense systems are activated. Hostile crews board the ship for an inspection. Raiders attack. Fighting ensues. Even the spore drive makes a jump. It’s as if the show doesn’t really want to change. As if TPTB think the only thing wrong with the show was the prequel setting. Let’s keep every thing exactly the same, only make this a sequel instead.

Gone are all the interesting beats with each character that made last week’s outing (“Far From Home") so pleasant. Nhan is nowhere to be seen - which is odd, given the clear security implications of a boarding party and inspection. Linus is seen for only half a second, which is sad because he brings a nice mood to the show whenever he gets to talk. Bryce and Rys are back to cyphers. Hue & Jet are AWOL. Only Detmer seems to have added any depth.

Its back to The Michael Burnham & Friends action hour.

The lack and depth and seriousness of this hour is captured in a scene where Tilly is running her finger over the badges of fallen comrades. Its the scene that Tilly and Burnham have alone. As I watched it, I thought back to nBSG. There they had a wall with pictures of everyone they had lost. Each picture meant something. Each face had a profound story behind it. Just saying the names - Hotdog, Kat, Boomer - even Kara (Starbuck) found herself on that wall at some point in the story. As I saw Tilly run her fingers over the badges, I realized I couldn’t name a single person whose loss Tilly might have been mourning. Not one.

The scene was hollow because the people on this show are wallpaper. Now their badges are wallpaper.

People of Earth could have been an hour where our crew goes to Earth, they actually meet the People of Earth, and the gravity of their loss has time to sink in. They have lost their homes. Their families. Friends. Lives. Civilisation. Is anything left? Is the town they came from still there. Do they have any extended family. How about burying their dead. No clue? Well fuck, at least the tree at the Academy is still there. That and our gang brokers peace between The Belters and The Inners. All in a day’s work.

Oh yeah, they added a human Ezri.

And no, Burnham and Book never had, well, you know. How disappointing.

Michael seemed so much more normal this hour. And we get lots of nice lingering shots of her lovely ass. But even if they aren’t fucking, Book is clearly a healthy influence. Hopefully we’ll see more of them together again soon.

2.5-3/4 for me. really enjoying this season.

I consider the first 2 seasons as hot garbage, but from the last 5 mins of S3E1 till now it has been quite good.
The way the issues were handled and the way things went were i'd say the most trek this show has ever been.
Saru is already one of fav captains now, which is ironic since i couldn't bother to care about anyone in the crew the last 2 seasons. i can barely remember anything from the past 2 seasons tbf.

Sure you can nitpick why earth has become like and all that , those are just plot devices , the thinking and the ideas are what's driving this season so far and i'm mighty happy.

also jonathan Frakes Yay!

Oh, I forgot my big Nitpick Of The Week: why, when the Disco was at *red alert*, were there still crew members sitting around the mess hall having a leisurely meal? I actually laughed at that one.

I also don’t like how it’s so in the audience’s faces that they and the characters are being led by their noses fromOne plot marker to the next

This isn’t elegant serialized storytelling g that feels organic and natural and the magic of the writers’s hands is pleasantly unobtrusive. No here it’s obvious that the writers in big NEON letters is flashing that “Hey, we contrived this big epic season long mystery and have markers set out and need to get to certain points each episode and we are going to clumsily launch the crew to those arbitrary spots”.

Everything feels contrived and the namedropping or the familiar species feel like pawns with the writers having no clue as to lovingly and affectionately put them to use in the story other than in a “let’s throw a dart at a trek race or character this week and see who we dump into the script

Also as evidence the writers have too much money and not enough talent or good sense is the fact the stidio gives the show money to film in an exotic place like Iceland So I’m thinking the writers are going to want to do justice to a locale that’s oft mentioned and never seen or visited but not done so in the epic fashion it deserves and with which a larger budget will allow

No. What we get is a mundane western and outpost setting. Why couldn’t this be filmed on a soundstage? Did any of this really deserve Iceland ? The studio should have told Kurtzman and Paradise when they asked to go film in Iceland something along the lines of what Weyoun once told Jake The Writer—you keep writing and we will keep reading and leave it at that.

Tilly echoes Jammer regarding Michael’s shift in affect: “You seem...lighter.”

I thought the spore drive was over and done with...?

A couple things surprised me in this episode, and I wonder if they were audibles called by the writing staff to shift direction from what they were aiming for in the first two episodes. Detmer’s ominous reaction to being injured in the previous episode seems to have been completely dropped; and I thought for sure Book had been introduced as a regular character. I see he is still in the key art, so maybe this itself was misdirection; but it just struck me as strange that he was leaving at all.

So far I like the new Trill character.

I thought this was a pretty good episode overall, although it featured more schmoopy one on one conversations about feelings than I need in Trek (HBO’s “In Treatment” is one of my all-time favorite shows, so I’m not opposed to it in general, just within this franchise). But this was a key element of the much beloved DS9, and it was a bit much for me there as well.

I like to give credit where it's due, and the Iceland setting was okay with me. Suitably alien-esque with the black landscapes. It's not like it was set in the saloon the whole show.

A note to aspiring reviewers: Criticizing every element of an episode and then giving 2/4 stars doesn't make a lot of sense. That's a passing grade, meaning the writers and everyone else did their homework and did good enough to graduate and get their certificate. That's what you're saying? Because the impression I get watching most Discovery episodes is an examination paper submitted with all the answers left blank, and colorful doodles drawn all around the edges of the paper. It looks lovely, skillfully done even, but devoid of all substance and relevant content.

I consider 2 stars out of four a loser episode. No desire to rewatch. Doesn’t inspire me. Does nothing for me. Can’t find anything to applaud the writers for

A 2.5 star episode is average. It either is a mixed bag with some things I liked or enjoyed coupled with things I didn’t like or dragged other elements down. Or it could simply be a fair episode. Doesn’t strive for much but what it does it well enough to hold my attention and be watchable

For perspective. A solid tv series should be getting 3 stars(solid good. Entertaining from beginning to end )most weeks with one or two 2 star episodes and the occasional 3.5 or 4 star episode(. Bring great or excellent

I don’t bother giving anything below 2 stars. It’s like giving an F- what’s the point. It’s a failure matter if degrees don’t matter at that point

I’ve found pretty much the first three episodes of DIS this season to be a waste of time and the studios money. No urgency. No sense the writers have something to say

Contrast to this to TNG where I give most episodes 3 stars and in its peak in season three and four I was giving a larger than would expect 3.5-4 stars to many episodes. Those episodes were consistently entertaining, balanced character and plot well, had right amount of action adventure and jeopardy/tension. And on many occasions while not necessary was appreciated when a philosophical idea or intriguing perspective or bit of sophisticated dialog found its way into a script

Seems like some people are still reviewing last week's episode here. I don't think the big grassy field was in Iceland (giant tree was of course CGI) and the western stuff was last week.

Anyway, this week I think the show took a big step up. I liked it much, much more than the first two episodes of this season. I have no substantive complaints whatsoever. Few nitpicks even come to mind. Some of the emotionality of the reunion in the first half of the episode felt a tiny bit overwrought to me, I recall last season someone said "Discovery doesn't want you to think - it wants you to feel" and that was on display in a lot of scenes in this particular episode, which focused much more on a bevy of different emotions than setting up some interesting intellectual dilemma. Also I think some of the worldbuilding here was extremely, extremely shallow - more should have changed in the Solar System than we saw - but I chalk that up to lack of creativity in the practical/VFX departments rather than writing.

But really, it was good. I loved the classic Trekkian twist that the "evil alien raiders" were really just humans in funny outfits - a reworking of a Trek trope going back to the Cormbomite Maneuver. I liked that the message of the episode - that all we need is open dialogue to bring people together (though it was a little bit...shallow) - was also a classic Trek trope which was reworked. Essentially, it was a "normal" episodic Trek episode with a bit of extra heavy drama piled on. And even this drama was mostly well done. Michael didn't wear on me at all, and Georgiou was even used well in this episode (unlike the outing last week).

Still, I'd only rate this as three stars out of four. The basic reason being while there wasn't much of anything concretely wrong with this episode, it wasn't breaking any new ground either. It's good that Discovery can belt out an hour of semi-episodic classic Trek, but...it's very derivative of what came before. All of the incredible contortions of the first two seasons, and we land on...a normal Star Trek that could have been done to start with?

I was fairly pleased with this episode. To the person who lamented the lack of all the other species, remember this is only the third episode of the season and warp travel is highly limited. We may yet see some of these peoples. Yes, I would have liked more time on Earth, but I'm not sure where that time would have come from. I liked the idea of the "lost" Titan colony, though I didn't understand why Wen felt the disguise was necessary, or for that matter, why they didn't try to send a message to Earth. But the "Federation saves the day through negotiation" was well handled, I thought, without too-too much moralizing.

I greatly appreciated the reduction in weird camera angles, though I'd be happiest if they just quit it altogether. And I loved that most of the violence was missing. I always look forward to eppies directed by Frakes. I thought all the interpersonal scenes were done well, and Book was given some good snappy lines. Saru's little speech to Burnham at the end was stilted, but that was the only time.

Did Burnham just appoint herself First Officer? And then she practically told Saru that she'd still be doing her own thing. I don't know why they make it sound like this is something different for her, she's always been a mutineer at heart.

Also, to the person who said Detmer's issue was "dropped" this episode, you must not have caught her worried question about how many people died. She has some major PTSD going on at least, and I'm sure it will turn into a plot point somehow. They did this to us the first season with Lorca, dropping tiny hints which most people just wrote off, and I think they're doing the same thing with her. Not that I expect her to go bad - but maybe. SOMEthing will happen with her.

I like Adira. I predict that she will become the second person able to navigate the spore drive, or should I say, the DASH drive.

This episode was just spinning the wheels and stalling. Didn’t really go anywhere. Not bad but pretty forgettable. Not much to say. Michael looked pretty this episode. Got her hair and makeup done and not many chances to do “the Michael face”.

This could be my favorite episode of Discovery yet! No Star Fleet on Earth!?!?! The episode pace was soothing. My cut on Burnham at this point is that for the first time in her life (a human raised on Vulcan, then a member of Star Fleet, then the mirror stuff, then having to save everything, etc, etc, etc) she was free. Free from the heavy responsibility she has always borne. She's had a year to breathe. I REALLY like this growth in her character. Love her relationship with Book. Love how they aren't a couple (yet). Would she have stepped aside and let Suru assume the Captainship had she not had this year? I'm not sure. It showed a maturity we hadn't seen in her yet. It's perfect that Suru is finally the Captain of Discovery. Loved "Aye Captain" in unison from the bridge crew. He stood his ground in this episode too. I also loved how Stamets interacted with Adira. I'll knock Michael some here going off and operating on her own with Book. But at the same time, I like how Suru stood by her. Of course, very Star Fleet/Federation like bringing folks to the table to work out their differences. (I had an 'Enterprise' Archer/Shran/Soval flashback) Georgiou was exactly what I want to see of her in this episode. She has a lot to bring to the table for Suru. Something is still going on with Detmer. It surprised me when Owosekun put her in her place. Loved seeing Christopher Heyerdahl in this episode! I pretty much love everything he's been in. Lot's of questions about the Solar System... Mars? ... The Moon? ... I'm sure we'll be back to Earth throughout season 3. Lots of cool 32nd-century tech. Discovery's shields might as well have not been there! If I were Saru, I'd ask for some shield/weapon help from Earth before they head off to find Star Fleet. Wonderful scene at the end with that big huge tree. My guess is we're off to Trill!!

Easy 4 stars.

I quite liked this one. It's an interesting take on the idea of isolationism - Earth itself is a paradise still, but it can't grow, protect its former colonies, or become more than what it is. I wouldn't be surprised if it's technically a paradise but maybe not all it's cracked up to be thanks to their extreme isolationist policy. I wonder if the Adira character will have some insight on this, having grown up on this version of Earth.

Burnham is so much better rounded this season. She feels a lot more like a real human being. Her interactions with Saru and even Georgiou felt more genuine than they had in the previous seasons. I think the addition of Book to this show was a terrific move - he's intelligent and charming in his own right, but he also allows Burnham to interact with someone in a natural, understated way. There's really no other character who has that kind of chemistry with her.

I still don't love the Georgiou character even though I like Michelle Yeoh a lot. The character's backstory is just so ludicrously weird and cartoonishly evil, it's hard to take seriously.

Saru becoming captain was a long time coming and a welcome scene. Doug Jones is really great as this character, and he manages to bring a unique take to the position of captain - much more serene and calm while still maintaining an air of command. It's impressive.

This is such a minor gripe, but I don't care for the way this show lights the space windows. Every time there's a window into space, there's a massive white light shining through. It's clearly being done for some sort of artistic reason, but I don't much like it. Makes sense if they're near a star or orbiting a planet, but this happens every time! It's odd.

I'm intrigued to see where we go next. The previews hint at Trill, which makes sense given Adria's backstory. The idea of a human host for a Trill is a interesting one - we've seen it before way back in "The Host," but DS9 definitely never picked up on that ability. Still, there is precedent for it.

Frakes directing is always better, and so we get less shaky cam, more full scene shots, and fewer extreme closeups. The intro explanation for "the burn" was not satisfactory. We are told that the dilithium "ran out". Then we are told it "went inert" causing any ship then at warp speed to explode. So we have two things going on--A, the universe ran out of dilithium. B, it went inert. So which is it? Or was it both? That seems pretty coincidental. Then we get into the standoff between the Earth Defense Force and the "aliens", with Discovery caught in the middle. It was awkwardly handled, and a bit convoluted. And then they decided to make Michael Burnham the key to a good outcome. I was hoping for something a little different this time, but no, they decided to stick to the formula where Michael Burnham saves the day, the ship, the universe, ever time without fail. It's getting really old, IMO.

This was a well directed, well paced, and well acted episode, for the most part. But the big concepts and premises, to me, are still problematic. The premise of the show seems to be that Michael Burnham and the Discovery are the key to everything, across all of time. They alone have spore drive technology, and it would seem that this tech will be key in allowing them to rebuild..both starfleet, and the federation. That's strange about the spore drive...it seems no one else ever thought of that. I was really hoping they would drop that technology/concept in the jump. Oh well. I think it makes the universe feel very small.

I also feel like they are trying to shove too much story into too little time. There was an entire story here about a group of exiled humans trying to return to Earth. Yet we learn absolutely nothing about them, don't see their planet, etc. This story could have been its own entire episode, but we get just a couple token scenes. It felt like they were there just as a prop to let Burnham and Disco prove to the audience that they know how to instill Federation values.

And so it feels like we are about to go on a fun space romp about the universe, visiting worlds instantly, having Michael Burnham introduce federation values, rinse and repeat. But never actually explore anything in depth, always in a merciless march towards the end of the season which is always just a few episodes away.

4 Stars.

3 for the actual episode, which I thought was pretty enjoyable. Not exactly new ground, but I thought it was done well.

.5 for the Lifa Tree at the end.

.5 for SMG in long braids. Stunning.

Brian - good to see I'm not the only one who's confused.

Early on we see a shot of dozens of stationary starfleet ships exploding, then later Saru manages to explain his way out of an interrogation by saying the Discovery avoided the Burn because they were "not at warp".

Also, Stamets is a mycologist? I mean I knew he was interested in fungi and that's how he came up with the spore drive, but he's also an engineer. The education system of the future must work entirely differently from ours, because engineering and mycology are worlds apart and you generally can't pursue both as a career at the same time.

Brian and John,
I am no expert on warp technology :), but in Michael's monologue of her message to her friends on Discovery, she says that "any ship with an active warp core detonated." So, I am guessing that a ship's warp core being active does not necessarily mean that it was moving at warp speed at that moment.

Tommy D.,
Good review :)
I agree with your 3-star portion - like you say, seen it all before.
Just not sure about the other two 0.5 portions :)

The synergy between Book and Michael is great in every scene they are together. Tilly and Michael also have a wonderful scene. Well-written episode overall by the same duo that brought the viewers the best episode of the first season "Into the Forrest" and one of the best ones of the second, "The Sound of Thunder." It was still a bit too much of a rehash of old Trek themes for me. So I'll take Tommy's 3 stars and leave it there, and wait for Jammer's review.

On a final note, really happy about the way Discovery is finally in full-focus mode on its crew (Book is a welcome addition as long as he remains the only one) without outsiders overcrowding each episode. I am even glad that Pike, Spock and Number One stuck around only one season - and that is coming from someone who enjoyed all three characters. Give me more Saru, Reno, Stamets, Culber, Detmer, and Owo please..

Found so many things about this episode annoying, cloying and even non-sensical. There is a half-decent story being told but when an episode gets bogged down by so much garbage, it really gets hard to enjoy. Was not a fan of most of the character interactions -- just an irritating vibe to it which wasn't present in the first 2 episodes.

Firstly, this issue of all dilithium going kapow! and devastation across all space -- do we really always have to have some galactic disaster at play?? Enough is enough! We also get one of those unbearable Burnham monologues again to kick off the episode -- just really trying to inject gravitas. It's like a must-have for this series -- try to make everything as weighty as possible.

Surprise! The magic mushroom drive is back. I should remember where it ended up after Season 2 but I couldn't give a crap. I thought it was permanently blown up and gone for good. It definitely seems farfetched that they should be able to fix it and have it working perfectly for the trip back to Earth.

While I liked Saru in "Far From Home" -- now I think the showrunners are going overboard with him representing the bastion of Star Fleet values. So there's the highly contrived mediation scene that gives him his moment to shine here. But I do like how he handles the captain from Earth, who is basically a VOY hard-headed alien of the week (until the very end).

The Burnham/Book interaction scenes are becoming irritating. They certainly act like BF/GF but obviously want to keep it under wraps. Of course the writers have to set Burnham up for some soul-searching so she has this thing with enjoying her new-found freedom and success as a raider and Georgiou clues into this and challenges her -- that was one of the few character interactions I liked.

The issue with Burnham ceding the captaincy to Saru -- how is she even in the running for the captain's chair? Of course Saru says all the right things and now Burnham is his No. 1. Saru is the best character on DSC but apparently he can do no wrong.

As for Adira the trill, kind of has an Ezri vibe to her. Initially I was not a fan of Ezri but was satisfied with her by the end of DS9. Too early to judge Adira but right now, she's neither here nor there. (Can I call her a "she"?)

2 stars for "People Of Earth" -- don't like a lot of the decisions the showrunners have made to set up this arc and efforts to force the episodes to show Trekkian values feel overly forced and contrived. The characters aren't turning into ones I can truly appreciate (other than perhaps Saru). As for the story overall, there may be some potential there but it's hard to have confidence in the writers since they haven't proven themselves. It seems the foundational stones are being laid for some new alliances and the re-formation of the Federation here with Earth and the folks from Titan.

Now I enjoyed this episode. Only a few missteps, but it held my attention till the end. For the most part, it was a fairly well executed episode. Discovery's normal excesses were reigned in nicely. Some of the scenes clocked me right in the feels.

Glad we got some information on how the dilithium exploded. It appears to have lost it's ability to mediate matter-antimatter reactions. If your matter and antimatter break containment while flitting about through the cosmos BOOM! Here's hoping they come up with a good reason why this happened. As of now, I'm betting some type of intelligent intervention. (Fingers crossed for a Douwd!!!)

Sonequa Martin-Green looked cute with the new hairstyle. She and David Ajala had pretty good chemistry. It's good to see him here in Discovery; I loved him in Falling Water. I was hoping he would remain on board, but no such luck. Hopefully, he'll feature prominently in the rest of the season.

Couple of nitpicks. When they beamed aboard, didn't they beam right through the shields? If so, are they using transporter tech or dimensional travel? Whatever it is Discovery better fix that. I was like, "oh, $#..."

The little girl was annoying to say the least. They should've chosen a better actress. Jodelle Ferland from Dark Matter would've fit that bill splendidly. Oh, well. Why in hell would Stamets start regurgitating highly classified information with her so readily? It didn't make any sense. My first instinct was that she was a mole sent by the attacking vessels. It's only the luck of the angels that she's really from Starfleet. And that's only assuming she's telling the truth.

Liquid hydrocarbons?!? Are you $#&%!+? kidding me?!? That's patently absurd. Did all the helium-3 floating around on Jupiter blink out of existence with the Burn? You have nuclear fusion; you ain't gonna be researching liquid hydrocarbons. What science consultant failed to kick the writers in the @$$ over that one?

I don't recall how they arrested the deterioration of Stamets's white matter. Can someone refresh my memory? If they didn't, they just dropped the ball on a major plot point. Stamets should be on his way to blithering brain damage by now.

Despite these issues, it was a solid 3 star episode for me.

Captain Saru! Best decision yet for this series. But of course, show-stealing Burnham goes and breaks every rule immediately after rejoining the crew. This undermines Saru's leadership this writing is exactly what makes this show anti-trek, everything she does is against the rules of the Star Fleet always.

Last gripe I have with this episode goes to Georgiou. In this great moment of classic Trek diplomatic resolution between to sworn enemies Georgiou has to ruin it. Attacks the guy and kicks him down to the ground. This character is what is wrong with this series.

Overall, really enjoying this season they are doing more things right in my opinion. The pacing feels much better this season, less frantic and the dialog/writting is getting better. They have toned off the melodrama only got a bit of it in the Tilly crying scene.

I really enjoyed the Stamets scenes with the new kid Barrio, he plays the cool wise mentor very well and enjoyed it. I look forward to more interactions between him and Barrio. Must be some 3000's technology to transfer a symbiont to a none trill which is sort of the writers playing loose with Trek, which they are happy to do almost any occasion, I could be wrong.

Tell Don't Show: The Episode. Michael apparently had quite an interesting character arc off-screen. Glad we get to hear characters discuss it at length instead of seeing it.
1.5 stars

Against all odds, I sort of liked this one. Much more watchable than the first two eps. I won't get my hopes up too much (after all, S2 seemed to be heading in the right direction with "New Eden" – and then everything fell apart), but I feel like some of the changes made for S3 are beginning to bear fruit.

The twirling, whirling shaky-cam was almost entirely absent this episode. One of the commenters above attributed it to director Jonathan Frakes, but I wasn't impressed with his work on previous STD episodes. It feels like TPTB have made an executive decision to tone down the Abrams-esque camera delirium. The past couple of weeks we've finally gotten some good looks at the interior sets, and we've had more beauty shots of the Discovery so far this season than in the entirety of S1.

I continue to enjoy David Ajala's performance as Book. It's kind of sad that "temporary" cast members Isaacs, Mount, and now Ajala outshine the regular cast every season. Book and Burnham together (or are they?) works so much better than the cringey, passionless "romance" between Burnham and Tyvoq in S1.

Overall, I'm glad that we're a thousand years apart from the world of Classic Trek and don't have to hear about Spock, Sarek, the Enterprise, and other elements from the first 50 years that are noncongruent with nuTrek. Even the goofy spore drive doesn't feel quite as egregious in the 32nd century.

The Tilly/Stamets pairing continues to annoy. I know they're going for an adversarial brother/sister-type relationship, but the banter is so childish and inane that I roll my eyes every time they're on screen together. Adding a 16-year old to the mix probably isn't going to improve this dynamic. Actually, Jett Reno is super annoying, too. What is it with all of the annoying characters congregating in the engineering section?

Finally, I liked the Trek-like resolution of the conflict between Earth and the raider ships. It felt very TNG. But why-oh-why do we have yet another depiction of a xenophobic and insular Earth less than a year after the same plot point showed up in ST:Picard? At least it feels a little more earned here than it did in STP.

@Z

I agree with that georgiou scene. I think we’re supposed to think that was funny and also think “woah what a badass”. In reality even as sick as that guy was he probably could have still palmed georgiou’s face and shoved her to the ground. She is really the worst thing of the series for me I don’t buy any of her story, the acting, I don’t buy that she’s super tough, she’s not a good convincing villain. It’s enough please send her back to mirror universe or anything she does fit well in the show

It’s funny. Most trek series had a well defined regular cast. You knew who the main players were. Not so with DIS. It seems they are solely focused on Burnham. Then had a season long guest star they rotate. Then reacting to fans wanting more traditional focus on a regular cast took which were originally intended to be wallpaper and have started throwing a tiny bone here or there to them

For me. It’s not enough. It doesn’t address the underlying fundamental problem that the casting wasn’t great to begin with for most of the characters and the little bit of writing they have gotten doesn’t make them anymore interesting and/or likeable So reunions among the cree carry zero emotional resonance. Big failure on the show’s part

It also hurts other things like the tree hugging or plight of the crew being cut off from their families and what was home and familiar. That should be moving and poignant. Instead it rings empty with this crew because the writers failed from day one to write good characters and interactions so when they come to things like this it carries a punch

Also this plot was tired. Last two episodes had a well trodden outpost/market and saloon. This week borrowing from Voyager Friendship One and ENT’s Terra Nova we get misdirection of the weirdly masked raiders turning out to be humans. yawn

Frakes direction does improve the show, and I imagine it's the best it can be with the current writing staff. And I don't even think I can blame them. I'd love to know these characters better so I can have the kind of emotional resonance the show wants me to have with them, and I think this season has improved on that front. I'd like to have longer, quieter, slower "sit downs" with the crew like we got in TNG, DS9 but I don't know if the production allows for that, with a seemingly set number of "things" to happen each minute, at a fast enough pace to keep viewers interested. This limits us to a snarky quip here, a cheeky flirty comment there, an inspirational few lines about hope. Georgiou may be a comic book character, but everyone who wishes she would have some depth to her may regret it when it's seen the show makes it impossible to do much more than a pencil sketch.

Wow, did we really need a ten minute crying/hugging scene with Burnham and the crew, the latter being without her for maybe a couple days (and for the audience, a single episode)? It feels like an extremely forced way for us to feel the bond between these people when that feeling should've been baked into the otherwise thin plotline of the episode.

Discovery again skirts around describing Future Earth -- despite *visiting Earth*. It's likely because the writers don't want to box themselves or other franchises in, but it really hurts the worldbuilding. As a result of unfamiliarity, what should feel like home instead feels distant and weird. Sure, there's humans and we (briefly) see San Francisco, but there isn't much else about Earth to latch onto storywise. Would anyone be surprised if we never see Earth or any of these people again this season?

The good part was Saru as captain. This genuinely felt like an earned moment for the series. Burnham and Book also have some fun scenes together which show that maybe Burnham has grown past Starfleet and onto the rest of her life. Will the change in Burnham stick? Eh.

The episode was good, but it felt like a filler... we get to know a few more characters... not as good as last week's, but we did not get a chance to see Earth properly... only that we got a sense of Earth being isolationist...
I think if this was part of the second episode, it might have been better...

Starfleet principles were upheld again, with Saru acting as a negotiator between the two... Burnham was the catalyst...

Georgiou was better this time round...

OK you “Negative Nellies” , I just wanted to chime in here to state that this life-long Star Trek fan really enjoyed this episode. One thing that has been missing from Discovery’s first two seasons was true human pathos — something TOS had in spades. It’s hard to do without edging over into “schmalz” territory; and this ep, unfortunately, started out with the schmalz. But as the story progressed I saw some true human pathos along with some decent humor. Combine that with a real “Star Trek” plot; fantastic, movie-quality SFX; and a decent twist ending and I was a happy camper.
Gimme’ more like this, please! ***1/2

@ Dick

"The twirling, whirling shaky-cam was almost entirely absent this episode. One of the commenters above attributed it to director Jonathan Frakes, but I wasn't impressed with his work on previous STD episodes. It feels like TPTB have made an executive decision to tone down the Abrams-esque camera delirium. The past couple of weeks we've finally gotten some good looks at the interior sets, and we've had more beauty shots of the Discovery so far this season than in the entirety of S1."

@JosephB

Agree!!

I'm betting this is why this episode felt so soothing to me. I didn't even think of this while watching it, but you've probably nailed it.

So, DIS S03 starts both intriguing and flawed. I am tempted to write “It has happen­ed be­fore and it will hap­pen again”.

The story idea of a post-apocalyptic future with tech­no­lo­gy be­com­ing part­ly un­avail­able and po­li­ti­cal struc­tures crumb­ling into a Bal­kanic mess is both bril­liant and trite, de­pend­ing on the ʜᴏᴡ (take ‘Mad Max’ on the bril­liant side, and ‘Andro­meda’ for a more asi­nine ap­proach). By now, we are pret­ty much in a Star­Warsy ter­ri­tory (ori­gi­nal tri­lo­gy), with a bunch of planets that make their own rules. This could be inter­esting.

We also have a Mystery™ that our heroes must solve, which was cer­tain­ly in­nov­ati­ve in 2000 but is less so now. No one, how­ever, brought up the ob­vious idea to ask Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po (who is both the queen and the twin sister of a pla­net that seems to been com­posed most­ly of di­lithi­um). Either the wri­ters for­got about her, or she will show up a a sur­prise trump card that will sur­prise no one. i am shocked, however, how bad the mys­te­ry was hand­led: When Burn­ham was con­front­ed with the dis­as­ter, she was cu­ri­ous to learn de­tails and asked about it (‘The Hope is You, 19:17), while Saru was curi­ous­ly un­in­qui­si­ti­ve about the lack of di­lithi­um and did not even ask what “The Burn” was (‘Far from Home’, 36:24). That’s ob­vious­ly be­cause while he did not know about it, he knew that the au­di­ence al­ready knows and would be bored by a second ex­pla­na­tion. Good writers could have given two com­ple­men­tary ex­pla­na­tions that make sense in the story and pro­vide dif­fe­rent parts of the puzzle to the au­di­ence. In­stead, we get an­other piece of ex­pla­na­tion at b­egin­ning of ‘People on Earth’ that in­forms that all *active* warp cores ex­plod­ed — since the warp core gets rare­ly shut down in a star­ship, this means pro­bab­ly the over­whelm­ing ma­jo­ri­ty of the fleet. In that light, when Saru (21:45) ex­plains “We were not at warp”, this should make no sense to Ndoye, but she buys it nevertheless.

This small example shows that the writing still sucks. Instead of the cha­rac­ters acting ac­cord­ing to the level of in­for­ma­tion they are estab­li­shed to have, they are re­le­ga­ted to plot pawns. Another ex­ampl­e is Adira. I know she is a like­able cha­rac­ter be­cause it was an­nounced so before on the me­dia. But where do Tilly and Sta­mets get this in­for­ma­tion? That tween or teen menace (¿?¿) had sa­bo­taged the ship im­me­di­ate­ly before an at­tack, but no one con­nects that. Rather, they go for a com­ple­te­ly un­expec­ted route and as­sume she is a nerd girl buy­ing some time, and brief her on the spore drive to open her up, which turns out the right move. Be­cause the script wants it so.

Rather, the script fo­cu­ses on Emo­ti­onal Mo­ments™, most of which range be­tween hol­low and un­natu­ral. Again, the worst of­fen­der is Burn­ham; she stayed pret­ty clear of this in “The Hope is You”, but as soon as she sees a Dis­co­very crew mem­ber, she falls back to her old ways. This soured the some­what awe­some end scene in “Far from Home” (sure, your friends are in peril, and you waste time by tel­ling them how you like them), and it be­comes per­vading in her dia­logues with Tilly and especi­al­ly Saru in ‘People of Earth’. Se­rious­ly, she al­lows Saru to be­come cap­tain? By what au­tho­ri­ty? She pro­motes herself to Num­ber One (stating her po­ten­tial future dis­obe­di­ence right in the process)? And every­one sobs in joy?

There is still a decent story that could be told de­cent­ly. But my hopes are dwindling. This show will be re­mem­bered as “a high-budget pres­tige show that went intel­lec­tu­al­ly out­clas­sed by a goofy 20-min car­toon show”. And I am StarTrek fan enough that I hope I am wrong.

Ok, not a good start. Dilithium reserves dried up but the Federation, when that finally happened, still hadn't found a replacement.
AND THEN THE BURN. Maybe it's just bad visual storytelling but framing it like ALL the ships everywhere exploded at the same time. That is pretty dumb.
The hairstyles looked good, though.
Next is very a undeserved emotional scene. It so strange. Burnham even cries. This would make far more sense if they had actually dedicated an episode at least to her being alone in the future but for some reason they put that all in a short flashback.
Wow, they even make Stamets say that the burn is impossible. I can hardly wait for the explanation.
- Do I like slightly stoned Burnham more than mopey vulcan Burnham?

Okokok let me get this straight. Earth can shot down ships. Why aren't they shooting at the pirate??! And because the pirate is wearing a helmet they never noticed that he is actually human???! When they first met he must have already worn a helmet. WHY???! They could not reach earth because they had no long range communication????! Titan is orbiting Saturn and Saturn 9.5 AU from earth. That means that a message with current technology would need 5.27 days from Titan to Earth. I get it that NuTrek doesn't care about science but by god! That is so dumb. Why not just say, all communication was destroyed... and they had ships that could fly with sublight speed. Even only with half impulse they would need less than two weeks to get to Earth.

It is kind of sad that the central conflict of the episode is so mindbogglingly stupid. This had a promising premise. Discovery shows up and just by their Federation combo of pragmatism and idealism sow a few seeds of peace and understanding. I really wonder why they not made 14 episodes or 16 because many of the episodes in season 3 feel overburdened. There is always sooo much going on and so little time to focus on it.

Saru remains the towering Starfleet symbol. Noice

Correction. Saturn ergo Titan is 9.5 AU from the sun. The distance between earth and Saturn changes from 7 AU to 11 AU.

@ Galadriel

"Another ex­ampl­e is Adira. I know she is a like­able cha­rac­ter be­cause it was an­nounced so before on the me­dia. But where do Tilly and Sta­mets get this in­for­ma­tion? That tween or teen menace (¿?¿) had sa­bo­taged the ship im­me­di­ate­ly before an at­tack, but no one con­nects that."

Stamets and Tilly found the "thing" she installed and deduced it was her. She didn't sabotage Discovery per se, she inhibited the inspectors from beaming back out because she wanted to spend more time onboard.

"...Rather, they go for a com­ple­te­ly un­expec­ted route and as­sume she is a nerd girl buy­ing some time, and brief her on the spore drive to open her up, which turns out the right move. Be­cause the script wants it so."

They didn't assume she was buying time, she told them that.

"Se­rious­ly, she al­lows Saru to be­come cap­tain? By what au­tho­ri­ty? She pro­motes herself to Num­ber One (stating her po­ten­tial future dis­obe­di­ence right in the process)? And every­one sobs in joy?"

She allows nothing. Suru states they "need to have a conversation" because HE thinks there needs to be a decision made between the two, HE declined Pike's decision to name him Captain before they battled Section 31... but she states that she isn't to be the Captain because Saru has earned it.

"Ok, not a good start. Dilithium reserves dried up but the Federation, when that finally happened, still hadn't found a replacement."

This is very difficult to understand. I presumed the "burn" was an omega explosion. But dilithium? By the 31st century they are still dependent on a substance that was used back in the TOS era? Very strange.

From what we have seen over the years of 26th, 29th and 31st century Starfleet it seems they should have been as dependent on dilithium as we are on steam power or coal.

If only they had a way to synthesize or somehow replicate matter out of energy....

@Jason
Or maybe oil and even our in comparison fairly primitive societies have started to replace fuel engines and in 50 years will probably have replaced fuel engines completely. As you say, it is really strange or dumb. Take your pick.

Hey and what is with federation bureaucrat guy. Is he now sitting at his desk again, waiting for somebody?!

Okay, so this was actually pretty good. Yes, the story beats were a little predictable near the end - but the battle in the middle and Saru's slightly unhinged-and-unconfident-but-want-to-do-the-right-thing leadership style is quite fun to watch, especially when he put the Discovery in the middle, knowing it couldn't take much of a hit. The confrontational Earth kind of makes sense and the neatly resolved issue with the raiders - yet it was a little cheesy - but thats no different from a lot of other ST episodes.

The characterisation is looking much, much stronger this series and Book has more charisma than most of the main cast (Michael included).

What really makes this shine though - as opposed to the previous seasons is the fresh nature and unknowing. When they jumped to Earth I genuinely had no idea what they would find there which is massively refreshing. 3.5/4 for me. Definitely moving in the right direction.

Well, that was a curate's egg.

The good first. It was clearly a Frakes show, tight direction with no unnecessary ShakyCam™ or wild spinning. VFX team on point as always. Grudge the cat is cute. Some of the actors (Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman and a few of the bridge bunnies) didn't suck.

But good *Lord* do they need to hire new writers for this show, because the batch they have right now are just not good. Continuity is still out to lunch (synthehol exists on the USS Discoball, so why was it a mystery to Scotty in "Relics"?). The plot walks into itself with an audible thud, twists handled with the subtle touch of a gold brick thrown at your face. Then stuff gets wrapped up all neat 'n' tidy with a pretty bow on it in five seconds because they realised that they were at the end of the episode runtime and needed to get to the credits. And yet the only reason there was a plot to be wrapped up is that dumb people did something dumb for a dumb reason - the Earth attack on a ship coming from Titan to try and get help. Now, I'm sorry but I just don't buy that an Earth not too far removed from the days of the Federation...they mentioned in the episode that it had been 100 years since the United Earth seceded - so the Federation lasted ~928 years all told (2161 to ~3089) and in less than a hundred years after that Earth people turned into genocidal maniacs?

Bull. ****.

It's not just the writing of course, though that continues to be the biggest problem. The guest cast didn't cover themselves in glory (either Phumzile Sitole was horribly miscast, or she's just not good enough to rise above the material when the writing quality nosedives). The music department got in the way at times and they can bloody well quit using the Courage fanfare, that should be reserved for much better work than this. And now SMG is playing Burnham in a lot of scenes with this weird kind of zen look. Well, it's either zen or she's completely off her face. I guess it's to try and show how it's been a year away from the crew for her and she's changed. I'm not sure it's much of an improvement on the wide-eyed panic that she spent most of S2 in.

tl;dr - this show *sucks*.

@Yanks

“She didn't sabotage Discovery per se, she inhibited the inspectors from beaming back out” — “They didn't assume she was buying time, she told them that”.

Adira sabotaged to inspectors’ per­so­nal trans­por­ters by ab­using the ship’s de­flec­tor. Mi­nu­tes later, the rai­ders attack, the in­spec­tors want to beam out but can’t. More­over, if the sa­bo­tage be re­moved, Dis­cove­ry’s shields would go down, making her help­less against the attack. The most ob­vious inter­pre­ta­tion is that Adira must be in league with the raiders. Yet Stamets
jumps to the con­clu­sion “Maybe, she was buying herself some time” (30:30). Then they talk to her about the spore drive, which is so high­ly clas­si­fied that Star­fleet had kept it secret for 930 years.

“Suru states they "need to have a conversation" because HE thinks there needs to be a decision made between the two”

I think that is correct, but the ques­tion arises why Saru wants the dis­cus­sion in the first place. He was First Of­fi­cer during S2 and has fil­led the rôle of Act­ing Cap­tain se­ve­ral times, and par­ti­cular­ly since the time jump. No one else has a claim to the Cen­tral Seat. The en­tire scene is only there to con­vin­ce us that Burn­ham is no longer over­ambi­ti­ous but a modest, suppor­tive team player.

But here is the thing: When Saru asks Burn­ham “for a con­ver­sa­tion” (7:30), I had ab­so­lu­te­ly no idea what he was going for. Burn­ham’s serene-smiling answer “Oh, no no no no no, there is no need” made real­ly no sense to me because I tru­ly con­si­de­red the is­sue on who is cap­tain clear by that point. Nᴏᴛ ꜱᴏ Bᴜʀɴʜᴀᴍ, who (cor­rect­ly, as it tur­ned out) as­su­med Saru would of­fer her cap­tain­cy. That she con­si­der­ed that a real pos­si­bi­li­ty either speaks vo­lu­mes about her am­bi­tion or rank-fixa­­tion, or is just bad writing.

I just can't get my head around the Burn. How can dilithium all over the galaxy just stop working? And why did it cause every warp core to explode? Burnham said that "dilithium is the heart of every warp capable ship". Did anybody tell the Romulans that? Or did the Discovery writers forget or just not know about that? Romulans don't use dilithium for their warp cores so they must surely dominate the galaxy? All very strange.

Scotty also thinks Kirk is still alive in "Relics", while later being depicted as present at his death in "Generations". And thats with the "good" Trek writers at the helm.

"Burnham said that "dilithium is the heart of every warp capable ship". Did anybody tell the Romulans that? Or did the Discovery writers forget or just not know about that? Romulans don't use dilithium for their warp cores so they must surely dominate the galaxy? All very strange.."

Would Burnham or anyone on Discovery even know this? Starfleet doesn't come into contact with the Romulans again until years after Discovery makes its jump to the future, and I don't remember if there was mention of a singularity drive until TNG.

Red D,

"I just can't get my head around the Burn. How can dilithium all over the galaxy just stop working? And why did it cause every warp core to explode? Burnham said that "dilithium is the heart of every warp-capable ship". Did anybody tell the Romulans that? Or did the Discovery writers forget or just not know about that? Romulans don't use dilithium for their warp cores so they must surely dominate the galaxy? All very strange."

Dilithium is used to 'focus' the energy needed for warp drive. It's not the energy source. Star Fleet (Federation) uses the Antimatter reaction of Deuterium and its antimatter counterpart as the fuel source for their and the Romulans use an artificial singularity for a power source.

When Suru was asked why Discovery didn't blow up during the burn like the others he answered "Discovery wasn't at warp", and Capt. Ndoye accepted it without question. So one would logically deduce that only the dilithium engaged in the warping process was affected by whatever cause the burn. The Romulans mined dilithium too. (Remans/Nemesis) so understanding what we know about warp drive and that the Romulans needed it in great quantities one could deduce that their engaged warp vessels were destroyed as well. Especially since we haven't heard one peep about the Romulans dominating the galaxy. It appears that traveling between star systems is a thing of the past or very very rare.

My best guess so far anyways.

"Star Fleet (Federation) uses the Antimatter reaction of Deuterium and its antimatter counterpart as the fuel source "

No no they would use deuterium, which is a heavy isotope of hydrogen, to power their nuclear fusion reactors. This is what our modern day experimental reactors use along with tritium.

The composition of their antimatter is never stated but since any anti matter would immediately produce gargantuan quantities of energy on contact with matter presumably any antimatter would do. You don't need a specific kind of antimatter- that is the beauty of antimatter- any type goes boom.

At first I thought that dilithium had something to do with the production of antimatter but that is contradicted by episodes like Peak Perprmance where it is explicitly stated that the Hathaway had trlithium crystals but no antimatter and so could not go to warp. Therefore, dilithium has something to do with channeling or focusing the antimatter reaction at least in larger warp engines (I highly doubt that Zephram Cochrane's basic drive used dilithium let alone antimatter)

But again, it is bizarre that in the 31st century earth, with their magic time ships and hyper advanced tech, somehow a resource that was used 800 years before is still so necessary to their technology. It isn't crazy in principle but it just rings false and smacks of bad storytelling. It is like the writers had no concept of how the 31st century (and prior) were previously conceived of in Trek canon. You might as well just say it is the 24th or 25th century.

watched the new Mandalorian (no spoilers) after watching the last two Discovery episodes.. here is my thought.. All I can say is that both franchises seem to have a lot of money for effects. But new Star Trek has decorated the screen with cool nifty but useless stuff while the Mandalorian feels like they are actually designing and building these worlds.. and thinking about what these cultures might actually use

There is no indication that Romulans used it in their warp drives. That they are mining it only means that. They are mining a valuable resource. I guess NuTrek could just say that they used it somehow but I think that they just didn't care. The entire galaxy uses the same kind of warp drive. For more than a thousand years (The Vulcans had warp drive since 1900 at least probably far longer).

I like this season of Discovery so far, but I do think they need to focus less on Burnham, she’s just not very interesting. I think it was a mistake to make her the lead character on the series. I hope they can make this season so that not every little revolves around her to a ridiculous degree.

@Galadriel

"...The most ob­vious inter­pre­ta­tion is that Adira must be in league with the raiders. Yet Stamets jumps to the con­clu­sion “Maybe, she was buying herself some time” (30:30)."

So, an inspector forcibly arrives with guns drawn from an Earth that is completely secluded and aggressive to strangers and the first thing they are supposed to think is that she is in league with folks that no one on Earth knows anything about except they raid everyone for their dilithium? ... Okey dokey...

"Then they talk to her about the spore drive, which is so high­ly clas­si­fied that Star­fleet had kept it secret for 930 years."

I had the same thought, but then I thought this is Stamets talking about his life's work with a young kid that has shown interest in it.

"I think that is correct,"

I do try

"... but the ques­tion arises why Saru wants the dis­cus­sion in the first place. He was First Of­fi­cer during S2 and has fil­led the rôle of Act­ing Cap­tain se­ve­ral times, and par­ti­cular­ly since the time jump."

Yes, he has and has done well, but since the jump is what, a couple of days?... a week maybe?

"No one else has a claim to the Cen­tral Seat. The en­tire scene is only there to con­vin­ce us that Burn­ham is no longer over­ambi­ti­ous but a modest, suppor­tive team player."

Don't agree. In Suru's mind, Michael definitely has a claim to it. If you have issues with her in season 1, remember she was, for lack of a better word, "cleared" and reinstated by Star Fleet as a Commander.

"But here is the thing: When Saru asks Burn­ham “for a con­ver­sa­tion” (7:30), I had ab­so­lu­te­ly no idea what he was going for. Burn­ham’s serene-smiling answer “Oh, no no no no no, there is no need” made real­ly no sense to me because I tru­ly con­si­de­red the is­sue on who is cap­tain clear by that point. Nᴏᴛ ꜱᴏ Bᴜʀɴʜᴀᴍ, who (cor­rect­ly, as it tur­ned out) as­su­med Saru would of­fer her cap­tain­cy. That she con­si­der­ed that a real pos­si­bi­li­ty either speaks vo­lu­mes about her am­bi­tion or rank-fixa­­tion, or is just bad writing."

What makes you think she considered it a real possibility? Did she call for the meeting? Did she tell Captain Pike not to give it to Saru? Did she tell Pike she wanted it? Everyone on the bridge was there when Suru told Pike:

"I would prefer if we focus on our respective tasks for now and discuss the captaincy later. There are many things to consider."

Saru is a couple of things. He's quite humble, he's always lacked in self-confidence in the Captain's Chair, and while they started at odds, has developed a great respect for Michael. Michael has helped him mature. He says as much at the end of the episode.

... and when the time came, EVERYONE looked to both of them, they are both Discovery Commanders and both well respected by all. They all saw Suru turn down Pike's offer. Michael's actions when Saru states there needs to be a discussion and her words don't for a second indicate any rank "rank-fixa­­tion". She doesn't even let Saru make the offer, she does nothing but gives him support and gives him confidence.

I don't even think her decision here is a result of her change. I think she would have done it if their arrival was a week apart. (now that I've thought about it) But I guess we'll never know.

@ Jason R.,

Just to answer your question about dilithium, what it does makes TOS (and TNG) all the more prescient: it is the channeling conduit through which the matter and antimatter are driven in order to meet safely with no interaction prior to the desired destination. The crystal lattice supposedly has a neutral character that will allow for easy direction of the particles without resistance or deviation. I suppose a magnetic field could do something similar, and in fact the starships do store the actual matter and antimatter in magnetic containers; it seems to be a conceit of the franchise that magnetic fields also can't direct the particles to their destination, and that crystals are needed.

And while you're right that any matter will annihilate with any antimatter, I expect that the reaction and byproducts may change depending on what is being annihilated. I guess a nuclear scientist would have to weigh in on which reaction and which elements would be the best to use. Offhand there's no reason I can think of that it couldn't be hydrogen and antihydrogen.

PS - did this episode actually call it the big burn? If so the whole concept seems to be a B5 rip-off (The Deconstruction of Falling Stars).

@Jason

"The composition of their antimatter is never stated but since any anti matter would immediately produce gargantuan quantities of energy on contact with matter presumably any antimatter would do. You don't need a specific kind of antimatter- that is the beauty of antimatter- any type goes boom."

Memory Alpha begs to differ: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium

@Booming

"There is no indication that Romulans used it in their warp drives. That they are mining it only means that. They are mining a valuable resource."

For what, breakfast? For trade with the multitude of Federation worlds? ... wait, no - they don't trade with the Federation... there is that pesky thing called the Neutral Zone.

"I guess NuTrek could just say that they used it somehow but I think that they just didn't care. The entire galaxy uses the same kind of warp drive. For more than a thousand years (The Vulcans had warp drive since 1900 at least probably far longer)."

Yes, to include the Romulans. To say otherwise, with no reference, is inappropriately digging at the writers. The only difference we know between the Romulan and Federation warp drives is the power source.

How often is the Romulan quantum singularity mentioned? I only recall it once and that was when it almost broke the universe with those time fractures. Could that have been an experimental vessel that was discontinued? Cause, you know, it was dangerous af?!?

How does the singularity produce warp power? Could it be through Hawking Radiation, which produces particles and antiparticles? Which, you know, might need to be regulated with dilithium to "safely" achieve warp?

Was it ever stated explicitly that Romulans don't use the dilithium that they enslaved Remans to mine? Does anyone actually have any evidence AT ALL of this? Or was this fandom headcanon, not supported by actual lore?

@Red D

Yanks pretty much covered it, but I'll say it again, remember that Douwd that killed all Husnock EVERYWHERE? It could've been something like that.

I am enjoying this season so far. It's not amazing but I keep wanting to come back each week... and should the point arise that I don't. I wont. I'm not going to watch something that pisses me off. Learned that from many other TV series before this.

@Quincy

In 'Timescape', Troi informs everyone that the Romulans use an artificial quantum singularity as their power source. She knows this because she spent several days aboard one, as Picard mentions in that same episode (See: 'Face of the Enemy'). It's safe to assume that this ship is not an experimental one, as the power source is used by more than one ship. Moreover, Troi mentions that 'Romulans use an artificial quantum singularity', and not 'the ship I was on used...', indicating a more common usage rather than a special case.

As far as I can tell, there is no indication regarding what the Romulans used the Reman dilithium mines for. It may well have been used as a regulator in a Romulan power core, or it may not. I have read that one of the Enterprise books indicates that Romulans don't use dilithium for their warp cores, but I cannot verify this.

The short answer is: we don't know. However, given how many people have raised this potential problem, it would have been nice if the show had included a quick line like "even Romulan power cores require some dilithium to work", or something like that. Right now, I can't fault people for suspecting this story point to be handwave-y BS to get us to a 'we're all stranded' situation.

@Henson

My question though is how would anyone aboard Discovery know about the singularity if Starfleet only found out about it in the 24th century? I guess maybe someone could have told Burnham in the year she was ahead of Discovery, but its not something I would expect the crew to know about. Did Discovery encounter any Romulans in the 1st two seasons? I can't remember, but I don't think they should have at that point in time before they jumped forward.

@Tommy D.

My proposed solution of a throw-away line explaining why Romulans also don't have warp power wouldn't be from any of the Discovery crew, but by someone native to this future time period, for the edification of the audience. But who knows, maybe they've still got plans for this plot point after all. We've still got plenty of episodes to go.

@Henson

Yeah I agree I don't think it would hurt. I guess I was reading into it being implied it would come from someone on the Discovery, which wouldn't make sense to me.

You can also add the Hirogen to the singularity drive list.

Shouldn't there be regulations which determine who is captain under any circumstances which may arise? It might seem like an act of humility for Burnham to turn down the captaincy, but if she's got more experience than Saru and is more qualified, then I imagine someone who loses their life because of a decision Saru makes which gets the ship blown up wouldn't agree.

@Yanks
"For what, breakfast? For trade with the multitude of Federation worlds? ... wait, no - they don't trade with the Federation... there is that pesky thing called the Neutral Zone."
Well, sure but the isolationist policy was towards the Federation and Dilithium was a rare commodity.

"My question though is how would anyone aboard Discovery know about the singularity if Starfleet only found out about it in the 24th century?"
They knew about it in the 24th century. The Federation and the Romulans were in regular contact between 2266 and 2311. There was also the war between the Earth Romulan war (2156-2160) in which Romulan ships were destroyed and captured. I find it highly unlikely that the Federation wouldn't know the basic principle of the energy production of one of it's main competitors and that you wouldn't be taught at starfleet academy.

@John
Burnham was science officer. There is really no reason that she should be captain. Saru was first officer ergo he becomes captain. These things have to be clear in a military hierarchy because when you are in a battle and the commanding officer gets killed or incapacitated then you cannot have a sit-in to talk out who now commands. Not that it matters but the highest officer on the ship after the first officer should be the chief engineer and then comes the science officer ergo Burnham or the security officer and it is kind of funny that 2 1/2 seasons in I have no idea who the security officer is.

whoops, the second quote was from Tommy D. My bad.

@Booming
"Burnham was science officer. There is really no reason that she should be captain. Saru was first officer ergo he becomes captain. These things have to be clear in a military hierarchy because when you are in a battle and the commanding officer gets killed or incapacitated then you cannot have a sit-in to talk out who now commands. Not that it matters but the highest officer on the ship after the first officer should be the chief engineer and then comes the science officer ergo Burnham or the security officer and it is kind of funny that 2 1/2 seasons in I have no idea who the security officer is. "

Yes, I agree, and that's what I'm saying. Saru made the offer, but what if Burnham accepted and her inferior captaincy skills put the ship in danger? It's not about being nice and turning down the position and being all smiles and humble about it like she's doing Saru a favor, it's a matter of duty and regulations.

@Booming

I think that sounds plausible, but recall in "Balance of Terror" that Spock described the both the weaponry and ship technology in the Earth Romulan war as "primitive" and Scotty describes their capabilities as "simple impulse power" in 2266.

@John
Yeah, NuTrek is obsessed with emotional moments. Plus we are all supposed to love Burnham. I don't think they care that it makes zero sense. There will be enough we think "Such a great moment. Burnham is so humble for not doing a Bounty like power grab." ;)

@Tommy
"Scotty describes their capabilities as "simple impulse power" in 2266."
If that is true then the whole Earth Romulan war makes no sense. In what episode did they say that? I guess it is possible that this didn't make sense on TOS.

"And while you're right that any matter will annihilate with any antimatter, I expect that the reaction and byproducts may change depending on what is being annihilated. I guess a nuclear scientist would have to weigh in on which reaction and which elements would be the best to use. Offhand there's no reason I can think of that it couldn't be hydrogen and antihydrogen."

Funny enough I was just browsing some random article yesterday about a hypothetical antimatter engine for space ships and they actually did mention that using positrons versus antiprotons could be preferable due to the type of radiation produced or whatnot. I thought of it about a second after I posted lol.

By the way Yanks, Memory Alpha says:

"Deuterium with an admixture of tritium was used as fuel in matter-antimatter reactions aboard starships"

BULLSHIT. this is a recipe for *nuclear fusion*. Modern nuclear fusion reactors use tritium and deuterium, deuterium being the bulk fuel for the reaction.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/NucEne/fusion.html

"The most promising of the hydrogen fusion reactions which make up the deuterium cycle is the fusion of deuterium and tritium."

Yes it is conceivable I suppose that by co-incidence the perfect antimatter recipe happens to use deuterium and tritium / anti deuterium / anti tritium counterparts or that Federation ships use deuterium fuel for both the matter component in their antimatter engines and as fuel for their fusion reactors but come on - the mention of deuterium and tritium together is a dead giveaway that this was supposed to refer specifically to fusion.

Memory Alpha either got confused or some rando episode of TNG / Voyager flubbed this distinction.

Keep in mind that starships in Star Trek use nuclear fusion as their everyday energy sources so the more logical explanation is that the deuterium / tritium is for the *fusion reactors* not for the antimatter used in the warp core.

@Henson

Okay. I'll accept that. Looking it up, there were three mentions of the artificial quantum singularity in canon that I could find. Two of them were major plot points that featured time anomalies: DS9: "Visionary," TNG: "Timescape." That says something. The throw away line in Discovery was that alternatives were unreliable. Spontaneously screwing up time stream two thirds of the time you're on screen sounds pretty unreliable to me. I can see why the Federation wouldn't want to start using it. And it might not even be compatible with Federation technology. Voyager passed up a number of technologies due to incompatibility issues.

There aren't that many ways of getting power out of a black hole safely. Charles Sheffield explored some methods in many of his science fiction novels. Robert Forward probably has some stuff written about it. If it's a charged rotating black hole you can steal energy from it. However, Hawking Radiation has to be a consideration. And if you're mining black holes for particles and antiparticles, why wouldn't you use dilithium to mediate their annihilation? Because even in Federation starships, dilithium isn't the power source. It's just the method of mediating the matter-antimatter reaction. Matter-antimatter annihilation is the power source. I still don't see the problem some are having. Not saying that's you, just putting it out there.

You'd have to identify the book for it to be a viable piece of evidence. Most of them aren't canon. That leaves "we don't know," as you stated. I'm not sure the number of people complaining is a valid measure of criticism, when it's clear their complaints are mostly based on nothing but a weak assumption. We know they were mining dilithium. We know that at least one avenue of extracting energy out of a black hole is particle/antiparticle annihilation. We can easily conclude that they need it for that. Canon doesn't contradict that POV. That's all I'm saying.

Even if we can speculate on other methods of propulsion, which I certainly agree we can, dilithium was far and wide the most used warp tech in Star Trek. I would expect its sudden elimination to have the kind of effects we're seeing in Discovery. Should they have recovered? I've already written about how they shouldn't be struggling even though they're more isolated. I think the drama is there with the isolation alone. There was no need for scavenging for scraps storyline. I'm not going to defend Discovery on that. But some of these complaints are just the usual nitpicking. And it's just as indefensible. If TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and the movies from the original timeline didn't give a definitive statement on this issue how in the world can they indict DSC for this?

@Tommy D.

"My question though is how would anyone aboard Discovery know about the singularity if Starfleet only found out about it in the 24th century? I guess maybe someone could have told Burnham in the year she was ahead of Discovery, but its not something I would expect the crew to know about. Did Discovery encounter any Romulans in the 1st two seasons? I can't remember, but I don't think they should have at that point in time before they jumped forward."

As I don't remember any time travel Discovery/Romulan encounters so far, the only way they would know is by reading the Sphere Data. (like Saru did regarding the Trills).

Jason R,

I not arguing actual science, we are talking "Treknology". You know, like the "Heisenberg Compensator"

Memory Alpha got it wrong? Really?

How about Ex Astris Scientia?

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/treknology/treknology-d.htm

"Dilithium crystal Component of the warp drive inside which the matter and antimatter streams are converted to an electroplasma stream in a controlled mutual annihilation. Occasionally referred to as dilithium matrix. Dilithium is the only known element to be non-reactive to antimatter when subjected to a high frequency electromagnetic field in the megawatt range. The efficiency of the reaction inside the crystal depends on its quality (TOS: "Mudd's Women", "The Alternative Factor", "Elaan of Troyius", "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", TNG: "Peak Performance", VOY: "Threshold").
Although Dilithium does not exist in the real world (and would probably not be a stable element if ever discovered), it is an efficient concept to solve the problem of controlling the matter/antimatter reaction. While only naturally occurring crystals were available in the 23rd century, monocrystalline dilithium can now be produced by means of epitaxy (TNGTM). The use of natural crystals in the 23rd century is a tongue-in-cheek reference to TOS: "Elaan of Troyius" where a necklace of raw dilithium saved the ship. It seems that during TOS dilithium was meant to be the actual power source of the ship, whereas in TNG and later it became "crystal"-clear that the warp drive is powered with matter and antimatter. During the first season of TOS the crystals were referred to as "lithium crystals". This was changed to "dilithium" because the real element could never have the properties ascribed to it."

@Booming

"There was also the war between the Earth Romulan war (2156-2160) in which Romulan ships were destroyed and captured. I find it highly unlikely that the Federation wouldn't know the basic principle of the energy production of one of it's main competitors and that you wouldn't be taught at starfleet academy."

When did we ever hear about Romulan ships being destroyed and captured?

SPOCK: By our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other.

This would logically suggest that no ships were ever "captured".

I'd find it unlikely that if Star Fleet learned that the Romulans had a completely different method of energy production that we wouldn't have heard about it over 60 years of Trek.

@Booming/John

Burnham served as the first officer aboard the USS Shenzhou in 2256, under Captain Philippa Georgiou.... chosen by Georgiou OVER Saru. Suru also knew this.

@Yanks
"Burnham served as the first officer aboard the USS Shenzhou in 2256, under Captain Philippa Georgiou.... chosen by Georgiou OVER Saru. Suru also knew this."
Irrelevant. She lost her post as first officer by inciting a mutiny. Later she got her rank back and was made science officer.

"When did we ever hear about Romulan ships being destroyed and captured?"
They had a four year war. I just speculated that at least one or two Romulan ships were destroyed or captured but I don't know.

I also find it highly unlikely that Starfleet intelligence at some point would not be able get a Romulan officer drunk and talk a bit about this and that.

The main beef I have with the primary cast is that I dislike their acting style. It seems unprofessional to me at times - sometimes it feels like their personal feuds and their personal beliefs from real life spill over into the show itself. So far, it’s not as bad as the Latif/Martin-Green dynamic was, but it’s definitely noticeable at times. It ruins the suspension of disbelief for me a lot of the time and will probably date the show in the future.

I thought that the new actors did a much better job across the board. I’m looking forward to getting to know the new characters in the future.

@Chekhov,

Yes, I feel the same way. The acting style of Wiseman (Tilly), Notaro (Reno) most notably stand out as rather unprofessional. This is a big drawback of DSC. But it also has to do with the writing, which is quite poor.

And this is another way in which Saru/Doug Jones stands out as the best character/actor on DSC for me. He really comes across as somebody who could be and does belong as a member of a respected Star Fleet organization.

I'm very happy Latif is gone -- his acting was terrible. Just about every scene with him fell short of the mark.

@ Rahul,

"Yes, I feel the same way. The acting style of Wiseman (Tilly), Notaro (Reno) most notably stand out as rather unprofessional. This is a big drawback of DSC. But it also has to do with the writing, which is quite poor."

As I haven't seen the episodes this season, would you mind explaining what you mean by "unprofessional"? Do you mean unprofessional as actors on DISC, or that their characters are unprofessional as Starfleet officers?

@ Peter G

Obviously I can't comment on their work habits as actors on DSC (professionalism as real world employees).

What I am commenting on is the character and how it is acted -- particularly Tilly and Reno stand out for the wrong reasons. This is an example of poor conception and writing, IMO. There are some scenes that I have to shake my head that these are how Star Fleet personnel are acting, talking. Just compare these characters with TOS/DS9 in particular and you'll see the difference.

The acting is generally so bad I think it has to be something to do with the writing and script. The acting just seems generally weird and unnatural across the board. That said, Pike and Saru (and Lorca and real universe Georgiou) is rather good so err.. not sure..

I've found a way to enjoy more DSC finally. My wife says it's "ok" (like ok ok rather than ok good) and she's not a star trek fan. She pointed out that I'd enjoy it more if i wasn't a star trek fan. I'm not going to say it's not Star Trek since that's a tired and somewhat ridiculous arguement but it is definitely "ok" sci-fi at least. Better than most around although there's not much.

Although by Jammers rating system and AS Star Trek i'd give the first episode 1 star and the next 1.5 stars. Very poor followed by poor (again as Star Trek).

Loads of it makes no sense (even by their own rules), loads of it doesn't fit canon and the spore drive it too overpowered and destroyed potential good stories.

It's diverting enough if you don't think about it too much and looks nice.

Incidently.. the tree scene.. I barely know the names of most of that crew let alone any back story about them. Surely I should know them pretty well by season 3. Even ENT managed that. It just felt like.. a tree.. some people I barely know.. so what..

yeah, since the moment I stopped taking this seriously I started to somewhat enjoy it, especially the stupid stuff and the sledgehammer emotional scenes.

Watched Mandalorian S2E1 tonight. After 3 episodes of Discovery, it was refreshing to see a show that knows how to keep things simple while still creating a true science fiction / alien setting. This coming from someone considering all Star Wars movies to be generally mediocre.

"I not arguing actual science, we are talking "Treknology". You know, like the "Heisenberg Compensator"

Well either the original writers were confused or (more likely) Memory Alpha got confused. I am certain whoever decided to reference tritium and deuterium in whatever script was referencing fusion, not antimatter. Somewhere along the chain that may have been confused with antimatter.

The third episode is the best of the season to date. Although I found the pace uneven, the universe building lacking, and both the 'Earth First/Alone' ethos and the death of millions of Federation members unsettling, the central story did reflect a bygone era of Trek. The episode ought perhaps not be given too much credit for merely reflecting what may be argued to be the core of the franchise, but, given the content of the first two seasons of the show, that bit of change is much appreciated.

Given the mention of Mandalorian, I will add that that series, although more shallow than most any in Star Trek, seems to better capture, reflect, and build upon the universe in which it exists. I'm still waiting for Discovery to consistently do the same.

Deuterium was always the matter component of Trek's antimatter drive.

This is mentioned in the TNG Technical Manual and it makes sense: If you're using deuterium for the fusion reactors anyway, why carry a different kind of matter to power the warp core?

Can someone PLEASE TELL ME how everyone isnt disappointed and annoyed that the conflicts 900 some years in the future were so simplistically and and swiftly solved by a ship from the past that just swoopa in..isn't that too implausible and contrived like when Wesley Crusher ciuld silve things no one else could on the Enterprise? Didnt the earth defense force lady ever think to stop and talk to the raiders?? Hope someone can respond.

Sad that a TREE and a CAT have more personality and are more likable than the cast

@Leif
Don't worry. The central conflict of the episode is really dumb on several levels. Just accept it as schlocky action sci fi and you gonna have fun.

"Deuterium was always the matter component of Trek's antimatter drive."

And the tritium?

*pops head in to see how folks are receiving the new season*

*sees the same people are still saying "this show sucks" yet watching and writing extensive reviews every week*

*logs back off*

Here's something: They made the leader of the UEDF a black female in a position of power and privilege (along with a transgender teenage female) and the downtrodden Titanite is a middle-aged white male. Not sure what the message here is, though. Maybe isolationist policies can hurt anyone down the line? Maybe nothing at all! :-)

Just to take Chrome's post in a different direction and make some observations, it's pretty clear to me DSC is pushing the narrative that if you're a heterosexual white male, you will be portrayed in the worst possible light.

I was surprised that the raider Wen was unmasked to reveal a tired old white man (presumably heterosexual) -- thought he was a legit alien at first. But then his submission is just another example of the narrative.

If we go back and look at DSC beginning with Lorca, we initially have an intriguing captain played by a pretty good actor in Isaacs. But he turns out to be a cardboard baddie Mirror Universe villain and is killed in some massive explosion.

Leland, head of S31, also fits the narrative. He becomes this AI / Control villain and is ultimately brutally killed. In "Far From Home" the remains of his body are still being cleaned up.

There was this Lt. Connelly in "Brother" -- a rare white male sighting but he dies a red-shirt death.

Others who have been on DSC and its main cast: Stamets is a white guy but he's gay and is portrayed as heroic. Saru, played by a white guy, is an alien with heavy prosthetics. I guess Pike is the exception to the DSC narrative.

I heard a rumor (probably to be taken with a large grain of salt) that when the "Strange New Worlds" series gets going and introduces Kirk, he'll be portrayed as bisexual. Again -- just a rumor and hopefully a false one.

The rest of the cast is Asian or Black or female. DSC also has a gay black doctor and Tig Notaro's character is a lesbian. Now we get a transgender actor to play a trill.

I don't know what percentages straight white males, gays, black females etc. are in the American population but if DSC's cast is supposed to be some fair representation of it, it has to be off the mark. But DSC is pushing a hyper-progressive agenda, for sure. Don't be surprised if Black Lives Matter and Antifa find some way to be represented in the 32nd century -- would not put it past these writers.

I was really wondering when we would get our first right wing culture war post for season 3.

Dear Rahul

You can always go watch TOS reruns and pretend Michelle Nichols is just some eye candy who knows her place and Sulu is a piece of the background and I bet you will feel much better.

@ dave,

"You can always go watch TOS reruns and pretend Michelle Nichols is just some eye candy who knows her place and Sulu is a piece of the background and I bet you will feel much better."

I think Rahul was drawing a distinction between "we are all welcome here" versus "some of us are actually *not* welcome here." You can decide which is a Trek message and which isn't (assuming his facts are in order).

Oh Rahul is right, probably even more than his heterosexual white malemind thinks. What were the best Star Trek shows? TOS and TNG. Why? White heterosexual men were in command. But in the 90s the WHMG (white heterosexual male genocide) started. Who was the highest ranking white heterosexual male on DS9 (Bashir was an arab)? We only have O'Brien who wasn't even an officer and constantly cucked by an asian female. And DS9 only became good when Admiral Ross took command. Can you even believe it. Not for one season was there a white male heterosexual captain in DS9. Same goes for Voyager. Highest white male heterosexual: the ultimate fuck up Tom Paris who was the only main cast to ever be demoted. It has started so long ago and what has happened. Between 2008 and 2017 only in one year heterosexual white males were president. Less than 15% of the time.

Discovery is somewhat less racist anti male anti heterosexual. So far only white captains, even though, as Rahul said, Saru is a white man in make up (so asian).

@Rahul
" introduces Kirk, he'll be portrayed as bisexual. Again -- just a rumor and hopefully a false one."
Hopefully. Imagining that people in the future and especially horndogs like Kirk would just bang everybody. Totally gay.

Ummm... who is "Michelle Nicholls"?

I see the classic left response here, which is unfortunate. Ignore facts or distort them, misrepresent/misinterpret or distort what someone says in order to push their narrative or agenda.

I'd have a lot more respect if somebody who disagrees with me can point to facts that suggest my hypothesis of heterosexual white males on DSC being portrayed in the worst ways possible was false. Or present an argument as to why we should embrace this narrative. But, sadly, I imagine that's not how the left operates.

In any case, I've always loved the diversity of the main Trek cast -- most notably on TOS. Whether you're white or non-white (like me), I think it was nice to see and a fair representation of society. But I don't like (what I think) is a narrative that one segment of society (heterosexual white males) are to be portrayed very poorly. Can't recall another Trek doing that to some segment of society quite like DSC is.

@Rahul
"In any case, I've always loved the diversity of the main Trek cast -- most notably on TOS"
Oh, sorry. You are trolling. Please continue. The traditional left will not bother you. :)

A lot of people on this and many threads about Star trek seem really focused on inconsistencies. But inconsistencies in Star Trek are as old as the franchise itself. My feeling is that it's fiction, and as long as the story is well told I don't mind some inconsistencies, as long as they aren't glaring within the story being told itself. Star Trek is a modern cultural myth, and different interpretations are welcome. There are many retellings of Shakespeare as well. I have plenty of issues with Discovery, but that has to do with the writing, the dialogue, and the characters in general. It doesn't have to be firmly consistent with other trek shows or movies.

Regarding some commenters' looking askance at the idea of The Burn, my guess is that it'll be explained through some pseudo quantum mechanical idea, that somehow all dilithium atoms are linked via quantum entanglement.

I haven't watched this so consider this very wild speculation, but I keep thinking that "The Burn" is going to be revealed as having something to do with BURNham.

@Leif

100-year old conflicts where the two sides refuse to discuss their differences is not uncommon in human history. One can argue that the evolution of humanity can also go backwards when a catastrofic event of galactic proportions ("The Burn") happens.

@Chrome

the "teenage female" (not sure how it was determined that she is trangender) does not have any significant position. She is just part of the inspection crew.

Rahul, on the whole "Disco is anti-white-male" thing. The discussion actually interests me because I had a friend text me the other day also mentioning the same thing. My thoughts on the subject: although it's impossible not to notice that the Disco producers have made a conscious decision to diversify the casting of the show, I don't think that necessarily equals an anti-white-male agenda.

I think that interpretation only holds water if you see such choices as a zero-sum game. By not creating straight white male characters, or not casting them in more generic guest roles, does that have to be seen as a "loss" in some kind of culture war, or as necessarily being "against" a particular race/gender/sexuality? Or is it just lifting up particular races/genders/sexualities that have historically been under-represented in Hollywood, even the notably progressive Star Trek?

Personally I have the latter opinion and actually find it to be a refreshing opportunity to spice up the character dynamics of the show. Not that the show takes that opportunity as much as I'd like.

It's not just the casting, either. Robert Duncan McNeill said in an interview that the Disco production team is also consciously hiring more diverse people behind the camera, too:

https://trekmovie.com/2018/07/09/robert-duncan-mcneill-explains-why-he-wont-be-directing-star-trek-discovery-season-2/

@Tim C
What do you think about these statements by rahul?
- if you're a heterosexual white male, you will be portrayed in the worst possible light.
- I guess Pike is the exception to the DSC narrative. (hating white heterosexual men)
- I don't know what percentages straight white males, gays, black females etc. are in the American population if DSC's cast is supposed to be some fair representation of it, it has to be off the mark. (Obviously a galaxy spanning Federation has to represent current US demographics or it is anti white heterosexual men)
- But DSC is pushing a hyper-progressive agenda, for sure.

@ Tim C

"it's impossible not to notice that the Disco producers have made a conscious decision to diversify the casting of the show, I don't think that necessarily equals an anti-white-male agenda."

The point I made that I think you're missing is *how* DSC is casting white heterosexual males. Pls go back and check out the examples I gave (Lorca, Leland, Wen). I say that this is indeed a narrative to portray white heterosexual men poorly. That's a different argument from the diversity of the cast, to which my only gripe is that DSC is forcing the gay/lesbian representation excessively.

Like I've already said, I've always respected Trek for attempting to show diversity in its cast but don't like how DSC is going about it. But my biggest problem is the seeming agenda against heterosexual white males. And I'm not white, but I am a heterosexual male.

Yeah, three sympathetic heterosexual white guys (Sarek, Spock, Pike) (not counting Saru) and two bad guys (Leland, Lorca). Discovery is so anti white heterosexual men. Good point.
And the guy this week, the old guy. Totally unsympathetic this desperate leader fighting for his suffering people.

"And I'm not white, but I am a heterosexual male."
Thank you for sour service.

We went from low fat shaming uno reverse card to white ass cheek on casting couch genocide. lmao!

I don't think that DSC is deliberately casting white men in villain roles; if that was the case, you would also have to level the same accusations against most of the non-alien villains in past iterations of Trek as well. Rather, the decision to diversify the regular cast and a lot of the recurring guest roles just means there's less places to slot in an average white guy, and villain-of-the-week or nameless extra is usually what's left. It's not a good look but I don't think I agree that it's a deliberate narrative choice.

"I don't think that DSC is deliberately casting white men in villain roles; if that was the case, you would also have to level the same accusations against most of the non-alien villains in past iterations of Trek as well." --- Yep, well said Tim C.
As Booming said, the old white guy this week did not appear to me as a villain either. He was just desperate for his people, and furthermore, ashamed of what he has become as the result of that desperation.

"Can't recall another Trek doing that to some segment of society quite like DSC is."
Rahul, TNG's (especially the first 3 seasons) Asian and Indian representation was dismal to the point of non-existence, not to mention villains were always dark-skin colored in TOS. As far as blacks go, Uhura was the pretty lady sitting and answering phones, Geordi was blind, Worf was the Klingon muscle force, and then there was, of course shit like "Code of Honor." But the white male captain and his white right-hand-man saving the day hardly ever skipped a beat.

There are plenty of choices to be had if one is looking for a TV show with an adequate (read: ubiquitous) representation of the white male heterosexual hero. DSC, thankfully, is not that.

@Booming
Well, to play along with Rahul's argument, the show didn't create Pike, Spock or Sarek.

@Mertov
And I'm glad DSC is "not that". Of course, in an ideal world, I would like it to be more than just "not that" - like DS9 was. That show didn't feel it could rest on its laurels in diversifying the cast and representation, it went way further to write serious ethical and philosophical themes (about race and also not) into its storylines. I don't get the same sense from DSC.

"Of course, in an ideal world, I would like it to be more than just "not that" - like DS9 was."

Of course, John, the ideal world of which you speak is your subjective one. In my opinion, DSC is more than 'just that' while I agree with you on DS9 being the standard of excellence in diversity and storytelling.

@rahul

The ‘absence’ of white heterosexual men in the narrative doesn’t make it anti-man. Just in the same way that a lack of many native-American people in this show doesn’t make it anti that particular group.

And your argument is a bit selective - let’s be honest. Saru is portrayed by Doug Jones and you conventionally decided not to mention that they drafted in Captain Pike to basically head up the show for an entire season. Spock, Sarek etc. But you decided to focus on.....Wen? A character who was given about 4 minutes of screen time.

A show about people flying through space has no obligation to reflect the current diversity of 21st USA. Which is why there is a Kelpian as Captain.

Basically - more diversity doesn’t mean anti-white male unless you think it does.

@John
The show portrays asian women worse than white men. We had good Georgiou for one episode, then we had terrible first officer (the one who tried to kill the Tardigrade), whose counterpart in the mirror universe was also evil and now we have super psycho mass murderer mirror Georgiou. Of the four asian women portrayed two were murderous psychos and one was just plain horrible. Surprisingly Rahul didn't notice that. Go figure.

@ Matt G

I just present the facts -- I provided my own conclusion as well -- but others should come to their own conclusions.

But it's probably worth clarifying what I said since there are those who like to distort things and misrepresent what I originally said/meant.

I want to focus on characters -- not the actors that play them.

And I'm specifically talking about characters that are human white heterosexual males (HWHMs) on DSC. I'm not talking about white male actors (whether they be hetero or not) portraying aliens (non-humans).

5 examples of HWHM characters on DSC that are either killed or are villains (i.e. portrayed in a negative light): Leland, Lorca, Harry Mudd, Lt. Connelly (red-shirt death), Wen. Pike is the exception but I think DSC is just setting up the character for his own show. The one white male on DSC (Stamets) is gay and he's a hero. I fully admit I may have missed a counter-example as I'm just going off the top of my head -- so hopefully somebody can courteously provide me with a counter-example.

So I'm not taking diversity as anti-HWHM. Just when presented with these 5 examples and that I can't think of a single HWHM character on DSC presented in a positive light, it's hard to call it a coincidence. Like I said, I came to my own conclusions, you can feel free to do the same. I'm aware the left/very progressives won't like my conclusion and maybe not even the facts themselves.

I could care less who or what race/sex/blah, blah get cast as long as they are good actors. ... and I'm one of those old white males.

I care more about the asinine moral high ground that the SJW Hollywood leftist thinks they are occupying when they are doing it.

Just to mention it for those that are always fair and balanced. We don't know anything about Leland's sexuality, nothing. Lorca had something with Cornwall but he could be bisexual or he could be a pansexual pervert. Elton John had sex with women but I wouldn't call him heterosexual.

The only person that is definitely one of those HWHMs is Pike who is our hero in shining armor. So 100% of those HWHMs are portrayed positively. Still not enough, I guess. :)

We also don't know what the old guy from this week boinks. Japanese Lovepillows?

And how about the names, even more uber racist!!
- Burnham, Pike, Tyler, Leland, Stamets, Tilly, Lorca, Culber, Booker, Cornwall, Reno, Detmer
All European/American names!!! Only exception: Owosekun.

Where are the Wang's (most common surname) or Li's (second most common surname). Where are the Devi's or Singh's?

Thanks to Rahul for highlighting this. The media certainly wouldn't report it...

5 minutes in and already committing the same sins as the first two seasons. A lengthy, stilted, WAY too cliché ridden, emotionally charged Burnham monologue thinly disguised as a “log entry”, accompanied by equally over-the-top dramatic music that demands you FEEL SOMETHING. Just not smart or good TV. Certainly nothing new.

Shows like TNG and DS9 were part of the 1990s liberal consensus. Here everyone gets along, women are empowered, blacks are equal, and gays are cool, so long as they stay off camera.

Because this consensus ignores the working class in favor for "identity politics", and because it ignores larger systemic factors, and because the 2008 financial crisis led to a lot of poor white folk getting screwed, this liberal consensus eventually led to a hyper-conservative backlash and eventually Trump.

"Discovery's" first season was explicitly designed to troll Trump fans. On one hand it gave you a corporate machine's view of diversity - lots of "token minorities" - on the other hand it gave you a hack writer's view of Roddenberry "wokeness", with its Traditional White Captain revealed to be a villain and its MAGA Klingon's who wished to make Q'onos Great Again.

If this triggered you, the show achieved part of what it set out to do. And what it set out to do is as facile as the kinds of folk who are triggered by this kind of stuff.

It's worth remembering that identity politics is not a "leftist" or "progressive" thing. Leftist academics were the first, in the 1970s, to recognize that identity politics fractures and works against creating real opportunities for ending marginalization. They celebrated identity politics for being instrumental in bringing about gay rights, women rights, black rights etc, but also saw how, in supplanting class rights or commonalities, such things would inevitably lead to a moving away from broad-based coalitional politics.

This is why most serious leftist philosophers deem identity politics to function as a kind of divide and rule strategy. The Pulitzer prize winning journalist Chris Hedges explicitly calls it a, quote, "form of corporate capitalism that only masquerades as a political platform, and which will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance."

And you had countless leftist thinkers and sociologists (Chomsky, Derber et al) predicting decades ago that, because capitalism allows no meaningful class based critique, but countless identity-politics based groups, that fragmented and isolated identity movements would arise and lead to weird far-right resurgences ("Yeah I'm a Nazi, but I wouldn't be one if you leftys didn't parade about all those goddamned gays!").

So one has to be nuanced when talking about all this. Those fretting about "woke Trek" and "SJWs" are in a sense as responsible for the worldwide trading of the 1990s liberal consensus for far-right movements, as the liberal consensus itself is, both turning their backs on working people.

A better "Discovery" would have anticipated how it would trigger all kinds of divisions, and fostered instead the kind of brotherhood that past Trek's got right. But that would entail a gentler show (which Michelle Paradise may build), a smarter show, and one that talks about class and issues of post-scarcity economics, which a corporation like CBS, and a guy like Kurtzman, have a natural aversion to.

And so you're left with what Yanks calls "SJW Hollywood leftists" with an "asinine moral high ground". Or what I call the Democratic Party in space. Way better than the other guys, but so smug, and so adept at fueling the problems they pretend to be solving.

To "Discovery's" credit, its checklist crew/cast will age far better than the views of those criticizing it. American television is becoming more diverse by the year. In 5 years time, "Discovery's" crew won't look like a corporate machine's attempts at diversity, it will look utterly normal. Young Trek fans will be baffled by discussions like this.

If you keep Star Trek in a holding pattern too long, there is of course the risk that its pattern will degrade to the point where it will be irretrievable...

:smirk:

Well-said, Trent. I especially like your analysis of class, it's relation to identity politics, and how both STD and real-life society fail to address those issues.

@Yanks, "I could care less who or what race/sex/blah, blah get cast (...) I care more about the asinine moral high ground that the SJW Hollywood leftist thinks they are occupying when they are doing it."

How do you feel watching TOS? That's some serious SJW casting right there.

Would you prefer if television casting decisions were reverted to how they operated in the 50's, where white men dominated at the expense of everyone else? I'm guessing you wouldn't. I would argue that more leading roles being given to women and people of color is in fact some degree of progress, and is preferable to how things were done in the 50's. There are objectively more opportunities for talented actors regardless of their race/sex, and that's a good thing. If you agree with that, what exactly is your complaint? That SJW's are too smug about doing the right thing?

It's also worth noting that the shift of TV and movies towards greater diversity isn't rooted solely in "SJW" values; it's also an expression of the market. It turns out there are more groups of people with money to pander to than just white men, and these groups like to see themselves represented in the shows they watch. That's just capitalism, baby. What conservative could have a problem with that?

"..like to see themselves represented on the screen" I see that often said on internet forums and social media. Personally I watch shows to lose myself a good story or perhaps a thought provoking tale.

Why do people feel the need to be "represented" on TV? Do they even? I've never met anyone.

(I'm "of color" btw. Ridiculous phrase as that is and not that it's relevant what race, sex or sexuality I am).

As for the episode:

1.5 stars. Some good ideas but badly written, acted and executed. Even Frakes couldn't save it. 4 stars if i was was just rating it for the visuals.

Jammer is continuing to be way more generous with this than I would be. I'm quite enjoying a PIC rewatch right now. I doubt I'll ever rewarch DSC and I even rewatch ENT sometimes.

"Personally I watch shows to lose myself a good story or perhaps a thought provoking tale."

I concur. But I'm also a white guy in the United States, so I grew up consuming media that was chock full of white people. If I was black or brown or whatever term you prefer for a non-white person in the U.S., watching TV and never seeing someone who looks like me unless they're the bad guy or the sidekick... perhaps I would feel differently. Maybe it would be nice to see the hero be someone who looks like me, even if I am enjoying the show for its writing. You personally don't care, and that's fine. But if representation in media doesn't really matter to most people, then why was having a black woman on the bridge a noteworthy thing back in the day? Why did it take so long to get gay people in there? Because in a small way, that representation was like a barometer for the culture of the time. People notice these things and they matter, to varying degrees based on the individual.

Just to be clear, I'm not defending STD and I don't think the show deserves credit for a diverse cast while never even showing interest in the kind of writing that actually explores issues of race, gender or class. It's cheap, and I think people are right to have contempt for that. I have contempt for that. I hate this show. But when people complain about how diversity in film and TV isn't bad but I guess I'm still mad at it anyway because I don't like the people doing it... And we start keeping score of which show has the correct ratio of black heroes to white villains and vice versa... I mean, what's the alternative? Should we go back?

@Trent

What evidence is there that DSC is promoting identity politics, other than you saying it?

Also, what obligation does a science fiction show about people flying through space have to address structural class issues? Absolutely none. It doesn’t have to do anything it doesn’t want to do.

You’re clearly a well read guy, with a keen interest in social politics - but I can’t help feeling that people are projecting whatever issues they have in the real world (SJWs, the leftist progressives etc). @Rahul is a prime example of this. He sees the issue being ‘anti-white heterosexual male’ when in fact the show has a myriad of problems - but he chooses to focus on this.

I think DSC is a decent, but not great show - it’s biggest issue is perhaps it’s not hard sci fi enough and instead is just going to emotion and action. By this measure it’s not political enough for anyone to get angry about it. My suspicion is that people were angry about SJWs and identity politics long before Discovery came around.....

@ Matt G
"He sees the issue being ‘anti-white heterosexual male’ when in fact the show has a myriad of problems - but he chooses to focus on this."
Rahul does that because it's not really about this show and it's numerous problems. He just wants to push his anti left agenda. Everybody is a postmodern Marxist or whatever buzzword these people pick up when skimming through breitbart inspired articles. Or maybe he is just a troll/well poisoner. I'm not sure.

@Matt G

"@Rahul is a prime example of this. He sees the issue being ‘anti-white heterosexual male’ when in fact the show has a myriad of problems - but he chooses to focus on this."

That I choose to focus on this despite DSC'S myriad of problems??

It's actually you Matt G who chooses to focus on this particular criticism of mine re. DSC. If you've read my prior comments on this show since 2017, you'll know that I've been pretty critical of the show's writing, some of the acting, the themes/premises. I think DSC is flawed, though it can crank out a pretty good episode now and then. One thing I absolutely try and do is be fair in my evaluation of it.

This latest observation about the portrayal of heterosexual human white males just occurred to me a few days ago. And since you can't seem to deal with facts and attempting to draw a reasonable conclusion from them, you try and discredit me b/c my logically derived conclusion is not welcomed by the ultra-progressive left. Classic.

Yes Rahul everybody is plotting against you. Twisting your words, manipulating your thoughts through brain wave manipulators! Oh this is big. For now you are probably save because you are a non-white but stay vigilant. The hyper communists are planning a global purge.

When I read your stuff Rahul I think of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHJCPoWCC8&ab_channel=JonB

@Trent, nicely put.

Reminds me of Chief Tyrol's speech calling for a workers' strike in Battlestar Galactica. Which of course was taken from a real speech back in the 60's.

https://archive.org/details/MarioSavioSpeechInBattlestarGalactica

Matt said: "What evidence is there that DSC is promoting identity politics, other than you saying it?"

I wouldn't call what DSC is doing "promoting identity politics". That's a very loaded and now heavily weaponized term.

I would simply say "Discovery" is trying to be as diverse and politically forward thinking as it imagines Trek always was. These are great ambitions.

But as you say, bad writing sabotaged the effort. A diverse cast that is not fleshed out doesn't look like a diverse cast, it looks like a cast of tokens with nothing to do but "be black" or "be gay" or "be Asian". This led to a subset of misguided fans accusing the show of "being bad because of its identity politics", as though if all these poorly written character were all white, somehow the show would suddenly be better.

The show's producers then constantly issued press releases "praising the most diverse Trek cast ever", and picking fights with what they believed to be reactionary fans. Jason Isaacs, who played Lorca, then dared Trump himself to watch the show, and Kurtzman promoted the show by mentioning Trump's wall quite a bit. This led to harsh lines in the sand being drawn. Suddenly fans who hated "Discovery" were bigots, and those who liked "Discovery" were righteous angels.

The show's Klingon arc was itself touted by writers and producers as being about Trump fans. The writers honestly thought they were offering a politically edgy, and insightful tale about the Trump moment. This led to right wing fans bashing the show even harder. When "Picard" seemingly shoe-horned 7of9 into a lesbian relationship, and Patrick Stewart touted the show as a comment on Brexit, similar things happened.

And then there were the leaks that Kurtzman's writer's room cautioned black writer Walter Mosley for using the N word. Mosley, who pointed out that he was explicitly using the word to make a point about racism and racists, was aghast at how politically correct and oversensitive the HR and Code of Conduct departments under Kurtzman were, that he quit. Which is not to say that such codes of conduct are bad - the science tells us they lead to positive social effects (people less rapey, less racist etc) - but a N word here is not a N word there. A corporation's mechanical understanding of (or handling of) racism, diversity and art is always going to run the risk of leading to odd art. But to mistake this art as a "leftist plot" or "ultra progressive agenda" is to miss the point entirely.

IMO the end result of all these growing pains will be positive, though. If "Discovery" survives more seasons, and fixes its problems, and its characters get fleshed out, the early seasons will probably be reappraised a bit. They'll look less awkward.


Matt said: "Also, what obligation does a science fiction show about people flying through space have to address structural class issues?"

None. But when you have an arc about MAGA Klingons, and which bashes hyper-conservative traditionalism, and which professes to be about contemporary America, you have to understand the issues you're talking about. Otherwise you end up where "Discovery" ends up: WMD's placed under a planet to shut people up.

The word "diversity" is not very descriptive. People are not a numerical calculation to play out on screen. What Trek was always about was showing a brotherhood of humanity, where no one is left out. It wasn't about diversity *for the sake of diversity*, but diversity for the sake of showing that in the future our current animosities and prejudices will be gone. So it is the intention that matters, not the color of the people on the ship.

There is definitely a significant difference between putting a black woman on the bridge, knowing it will cause backlash, because you need to say something about the humanity of black people, versus putting a black person on the bridge because you expect great press for it and to be praised by your expected fan base. The intentions between these two are worlds apart, and therefore so is the message and the tone of the material. For anyone stuck in doing head counts and skin pigmentation tests, you are on the wrong track. That kind of plastic aesthetic concern is never what Roddenberry was all about. It was as striking that Sulu and Chekhov were on the bridge as that Uhura was, although they no doubt didn't receive as much backlash. But the challenge there was they represented *enemy powers* (or recently enemies) and yet here they are cooperating in the spirit of friendship. Their skin color is a minor axis when compared to the broader idea of bringing in and loving people who we have misgivings about.

If DISC wanted to be forward thinking and edgy in the way TOS was, it would have had a transsexual crew member working alongside a MAGA-hat wearing redneck, and having a grand time celebrating their differences. Turning the showrunners' idea of boogeymen into literal boogeymen in the show is literally the opposite of the Trek message. Trek is about discovering that there are no boogeymen, only differences that need to be respected. Even the pig-head Tellarites are part of the team!

So when deciding whether DISC is being forward thinking or edgy, you might want to consider the intentions and the expected reactions. Designing a show blueprint focused on stroking the egos of half of America while dissing the other half isn't Trek, it's theatrical punditry masquerading as debate, like Crossfire used to be. If you are fixated on the skin color of the crew alone you've already missed the game. Focus on what the show is saying and how it's saying it. Is it saying that the people you are afraid of are more similar to you than you think, or is it saying that they really are to be feared and defeated? Judge that conclusion and then you will be able to say what DISC is about.

Well said Peter G. -- and this is why I think DSC has dropped the Trekkian ball.

@ Peter
"it would have had a transsexual crew member working alongside a MAGA-hat wearing redneck"
Talking about the best way to fry meat and how changing genitals feels.
Maybe next time.

Imagine a world where the "white hetro male" was secure with himself and his identity that he didn't get upset and uncomfortable if people that " dont look like him" are in positions of power or influence.

Imagine a world.

It's not going to help our discourse here for people to intentionally misrepresent others' views in order to demonize them. In fact that seems to be the problem with DISC itself.

You want to find a Trekkian discourse, ask what you can find in common with those you disagree with. If they make factual errors then correct them; if they state opinions you disagree with you might want to find out why those beliefs matter to them.

@Peter
I know you mean dave but read Rahul's first post about the topic. If he wanted to start a real debate or discourse then he did a horrible job.

I mean look at this stuff.
- DSC is pushing the narrative that if you're a heterosexual white male, you will be portrayed in the worst possible light.
- I was surprised that the raider Wen was unmasked to reveal a tired old white man (presumably heterosexual) -- thought he was a legit alien at first. But then his submission is just another example of the narrative.
- I heard a rumor (probably to be taken with a large grain of salt) that when the "Strange New Worlds" series gets going and introduces Kirk, he'll be portrayed as bisexual. Again -- just a rumor and hopefully a false one.
- But DSC is pushing a hyper-progressive agenda, for sure.

That is all from his very first post about the topic. That is not how you start a debate, that is how you start a conflict.

I actually thought he was trolling. That is why I didn't take him seriously.

@ Booming,

I think your chief mistake here is the assumption that Rahul was trying to start anything in the way you describe. It seemed to me that he was making an observation and stating an opinion about the show, which is basically what this board is for. Maybe a post starts a discussion, maybe not, but you can't take an opinion (even a controversial one) and just assume the motive behind it was to stoke flames.

On the other hand, when someone posts directly in reply to *someone else's post* now THEY are trying to start a discussion; or rather they are having one by engaging another poster. You can't blame OP for someone else deciding to reply to their post, and claim OP was trying to "start a real debate or discourse". To whit Rahul was referencing Chrome in the post you're referring to, someone who I may note is not currently involved in this hooha.

To the extent that any post is perhaps inviting discussion, then sure, posting at all could be said to be "trying to" initiate discussion. Other than that I think you are attributing to Rahul both motives and actions which are not in evidence. It does seem like people who don't like what he's saying are assuming the worst in order to undermine his point. You don't have to agree with him, but I don't think this is the best way to discuss what he sees as facts in evidence.

You are conflating the content of Rahul's post with nefarious motives, and assuming that someone could only have that opinion for nefarious reasons. Which unfortunately plays into what Rahul is saying about the left. Prove him wrong! Show that you can disagree without calling him a troll.

@Booming / Peter I think it was Trent who started this latest spat and I think his most recent posts have been attempts to incite this exact kind of argument.

He's been trolling right wing posters the past couple days inserting these little remarks that seem designed to provoke this exact response.

I'm begging him to stop.

Look at this:
"Kirk, he'll be portrayed as bisexual. Again -- just a rumor and hopefully a false one."
Dropping such a sentence without explanation while making an argument ABOUT INTOLERANCE! If you are part of a minority you will understand that sentence. Either Rahul meant it that way or he is oblivious when it comes to intolerance.

What reaction do you expect. In Germany we say: Der Ton macht die Musik/The sound makes the music (It’s not what you say, but how you say it)

Well whatever. I liked your post about Star Trek showing how in the future it will all be hugs and kisses. Booming out.

I seem to really be in the minority or maybe even the only person who thinks episode one is the best of three eps so far. I’m not saying it was perfect but the way it focused on just a couple characters and was slowed down and was coherent was great. As soon as the we went back to the crew it was like straight back to the old. Incoherent plots, everything fast fast fast, characters are still badly written. I understand experiencing the crew is what Trek is but I found episode one to be a fundamentally better experience regardless

@Sen-Sors

You said “what exactly is your complaint? That SJW's are too smug about doing the right thing?

It turns out there are more groups of people with money to pander to than just white men”

So which one is it? The right thing or pandering for money?
I don’t want to deeply get into this but I personally don’t think kurtzmann and company are out to change the world free of charge. Personally I don’t care what race, gender, sexual preference or religion any of the characters are I only wish they were better written. And I think that’s getting a little more to the crux of the problem that in my opinion Kurtzman was hired more for some political leanings and “progressive thinking” more than quality of his writing.

@Jason R.
"He's been trolling right wing posters the past couple days inserting these little remarks that seem designed to provoke this exact response."

A regular respected poster here is doing that?

Nah. Can't be. You told me that yourself just a few days ago. ;-)

Peter said: "Designing a show blueprint focused on stroking the egos of half of America while dissing the other half isn't Trek"

And going on social media, or talking to journalists, and baiting things further.

The fact is, "Discovery" season 1 explicitly set out to troll a certain type of conservative. The cast and crew were all doing this. Go back and look at Kurtzman's interviews during season 1, and you'll notice that he'd often name drop Trump, or cite his female heavy cast and captain as being a response to Trump or Trump's wall. Jason Isaacs literally called complaining fans racists and bigots.

I haven't seen the third episode of this season yet, so I don't know if Rahul is right about this stuff carrying on into season 3. But season 1 of "Discovery" was definitely trolling white dudes. The show started course correcting afterwards, and by season 3 it seems to have become a slightly gentler, softer thing.

Dave said: "Imagine a world where the "white hetro male" was secure with himself and his identity that he didn't get upset and uncomfortable if people that " dont look like him" are in positions of power or influence."

Absolutely, but as Peter said, it's the intention that matters. I'm sure most people could care less if a show bashes "white hetero males" or MAGA Klingons, but if you're doing it, you have to be smart about it.

"Discovery's" first season just pushed a subset of the fandom away, and spurred them into thinking the show's bad writing was due to quota picks, black people or a lack of white men (the level of homophobic hate mail its gay cast members got was ridiculous). Even worse, it offered fans of the season no insights into what causes Make Qo'nos Great Again phenomenons.


Jason said: "I think it was Trent who started this latest spat...his most recent posts have been attempts to incite this exact kind of argument."

How? I think you're confusing me with BOOMING, LEGENDARY INSTIGATOR OF ALL CHAOS.

This debate has been going on for days. I only entered this convo yesterday when I saw Rahul conflating "leftism" with "liberalism", and using "identity politics" as a slur.

Booming said: "Look at this: "Kirk, he'll be portrayed as bisexual... "

Kirk was always bisexual in my mind. Kirk and Riker always struck me as bi-curious sex junkies.

@Trent

"This debate has been going on for days. I only entered this convo yesterday when I saw Rahul conflating "leftism" with "liberalism", and using "identity politics" as a slur."

Please explain to me how I did this when all I did is posit some facts and tried to draw a reasonable conclusion from them. And that conclusion was not just an isolated example of my criticism of DSC.

"How? I think you're confusing me with BOOMING, LEGENDARY INSTIGATOR OF ALL CHAOS."

Booming is a powder keg with a short fuse but someone typically has to light it first for her to go boom.

Come on, every review you've posted has been sprinkled with "right wing reactionary" this and "Jordan Peterson" that. You were the one who started this whole "Discovery is trolling evil white reactionaries" which Rahul picked up on. Because you insert these gratuitous comments in the middle of otherwise substantive comments people gloss over them but it's like you are lobbing active grenades into the threads. It's kind of diabolical :)

Well, lot's of interesting discussions here.

Trent, awesome read! Lot's of great stuff in there. Being liberal used to mean something. Now, not so much. I identity politics (hand in hand with the cancel culture) is out of control.

Peter G, you as well.

@ Sen-Sors

@Yanks, "I could care less who or what race/sex/blah, blah get cast (...) I care more about the asinine moral high ground that the SJW Hollywood leftist thinks they are occupying when they are doing it."

How do you feel watching TOS? That's some serious SJW casting right there."

Nor really. Uhura sure, but everyone else is cast as representing different nations, not race or sexual preference.

"Would you prefer if television casting decisions were reverted to how they operated in the 50's, where white men dominated at the expense of everyone else? I'm guessing you wouldn't. I would argue that more leading roles being given to women and people of color is in fact some degree of progress, and is preferable to how things were done in the 50's. There are objectively more opportunities for talented actors regardless of their race/sex, and that's a good thing. If you agree with that, what exactly is your complaint? That SJW's are too smug about doing the right thing?"

50's? Why would you go that far? Smug? Probably, but as Trent and Peter noted it's much more than that. You don't come out and say "Discovery will have the first black female lead and first gay male couple and you'll like it or else you aren't real Trek fans". (I paraphrase) I've never once had an issue with Burnham's skin color or gender and I have never adversely commented on Stamet's and Culber's relationship. (aside from the writing) I've intentionally stayed silent because I do embrace IDIC, even though when they kiss I turn my head. I'm not going to apologize for it, it disgusts me. Faulty on my part? Maybe. When it's trumpeted like that it just irks me. I had no issue with Janeway being a Captain of a Star Ship, I had no issue with Sisko being Commander of a Space Station. I find those things are positives that Trek has to offer to everyone that watches. When Trek put Uhura on the bridge they didn't come out and call folks racist idiots, they changed minds by writing her so it demonstrated that it didn't matter what her skin color was. When she spoke with President Lincoln she wasn't offended because words like that don't matter anymore. The only bigotry I can remember being brought up was to protect Spock in BoT. Uhura was as much a part of the team as anyone else, no more no less. Now I grew up in a small town. The only black folks I ever saw were up at the tiny State College and the ONE black kid in my high school that was an exchange student and attended my church. I didn't watch/love Trek when I watched it as a kid because of the diversity, I didn't think anything of it, it didn't phase me. Only when I moved south and joined the Navy did I learn what real racism was. I loved Trek because of the cool Space Ship, Kirk and Spock, and "good folks doing good things for the right reasons". I can empathize with folks and understand why it meant a lot to them now. I love to hear Nichelle speak of her meeting with MLK.

"It's also worth noting that the shift of TV and movies towards greater diversity isn't rooted solely in "SJW" values; it's also an expression of the market. It turns out there are more groups of people with money to pander to than just white men, and these groups like to see themselves represented in the shows they watch. That's just capitalism, baby. What conservative could have a problem with that?"

No problem with that at all, and I'm glad it "sells". Like I said earlier. I don't care that there isn't an abundance of roll model type white males in this show. Now if they aren't there because "we" need to punish all the white males living today for the sins of decades and centuries past - that I have issues with. That is what SJW's do. This is 2020, cast whomever you wish as long as it contributes to a good story. Hell, I didn't think the season 1 story was a dig against Trump, I thought it was Klingons being Klingons from that time period. Many times Worf made reference to "the old ways". I thought we were just watching it.

All in all, good discussion folks. Always enjoyable here.

@Cody B

"So which one is it? The right thing or pandering for money?"

Why not both?

@Yanks
"I have never adversely commented on Stamet's and Culber's relationship. (aside from the writing) I've intentionally stayed silent because I do embrace IDIC, even though when they kiss I turn my head. I'm not going to apologize for it, it disgusts me. Faulty on my part? Maybe."
It is not your fault that it disgusts you and that you have to stay silent as to not say something negative about homosexuals. That is integrated cultural priming you probably received a long time ago.

That you do not actively change it. That is your fault.

"That you do not actively change it. That is your fault."

Now I'm intrigued. How do you change a feeling of disgust? Some kind of conversion therapy or inverse Clockwork Orange treatment?

"Now I'm intrigued. How do you change a feeling of disgust?"
You are not born homophobic. Homophobia or antisemitism is something you learn and it can be unlearned, on a rational and a emotional level. I would recommend rational engagement with oneself to understand the reasons for how a homophobic environment leads to emotional reactions and emotional engagement by empathizing with the pain homophobia inflicts. Like the endless number of victims of homophobic violence. it is never talked about in the media but the numbers for that are gigantic. I live in a city were the police estimates around 5000 violent attacks on homo- and transsexuals per year, victim organizations say that it is well beyond 10000. So between 13- and 30 violent attacks per day. I personally know people who were beaten up for holding hands.
And why were they beaten up? Because some people found that disgusting.

@Booming

I’m sorry to hear that. Proud to say here in America it is fine for gay men to hold hands. Just saw it on someone’s live stream yesterday in Texas.

"You are not born homophobic"

Well you're not born arachnophobic or agoraphobic either. So what's the cure then? Some kind of exposure therapy? Lots and lots of gay sex I presume?

Definitely gay sex, sex with Trannies. It's a long, thick and hard process.

@Jason R.

You're supposed to smoke approximately 5lbs of magic mushrooms followed by watching at least 1000 hours of gay porn in a three day period. Afterwards, your brain will purge, reboot, and you will feel joyous every time you see two dudes lip wrestling in public. It's called anti-phobia fungal therapy. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I dare say the magic mushrooms wouldn't hurt. Just look at Stamets, and he works with mushrooms all day.

Booming.

By the very definition of homophobic:

"having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people."

I'm not.

My physical reaction to men kissing etc does not make me homophobic.

Now if I did all that other stuff you mention I would be, but I don't.

Rahul said: "Please explain to me how I did this..."

You implied that "Discovery's" casting is a form of "political correctness" and "identity politics", and you equate this with a "hyper progressive" and "leftist agenda" which you believe is "anti white male".

Leftists are typically against forms of identity politics, and the term "political correctness" was popularized in the 60s by leftists to describe, not people who played identity politics, but an excessive orthodoxy who didn't (ie - someone was "politically correct" if they ignored the plights of minority groups).

The kind of "identity politics" you're talking about tends to be a product of contemporary liberalism, which makes personal identity and the self the entire horizon of political consciousness, whilst the left traditionally focuses on dismantling hierarchical structures and on mass, collective action. It's the old joke: a liberal wants more female drone pilots, a leftist wants less drones.

"Discovery" is owned by Viacom, one of the largest companies in the world, and who dominate print media, film and TV by their ownership of Paramount Pictures and Simon and Schuster. Progressiveness is anathema to a company like this.

I get what you're saying, though, and basically agree with your point on Disco (at least season 1), I just don't like how words and definitions keep shifting. The idea of Kurtzman and Viacom getting called "progressive" annoys me. I like Yank's description better: a kind of dumb, sheltered, West-Coast Hollywood version of wokeness.

@Yanks
Being physically repulsed by men kissing each other (and other things?), what would you call that?

@Booming
@Yanks
Being physically repulsed by men kissing each other (and other things?), what would you call that?

Very good question. I am trying to decide this but it is tricky. For example, I am repulsed by cockroaches and beetles and yes I am a little afraid of them.

But then again, I am also repulsed by feces and farts but I I am reasonably confident that I don't fear them.

So it seems to me there is probably a strong correlation there but I don't think disgust must be synonymous with fear.

But this is truly an interesting question.

That said I am not sure "homophobia" as it is popularly understood can be considered a traditional "phobia" so there's that wrinkle.

@Jason
"That said I am not sure "homophobia" as it is popularly understood can be considered a traditional "phobia" so there's that wrinkle."
That is the question. In eastern Europe and Russia LGBT people are portrayed as a threat to the survival of the nation, an insidious and destructive ideology. A Phobia, I think, is a feeling of being threatened. So maybe there are certain similarities. Arachnophobia for example I think is learned but this is all barely more than speculation on my part. But I also heard critic of the term homophobia.

And to be the first to say it, identity politics is dead. The center left has to learn that first you have to care for your base. I always say that I wish I could force leftist activists to live with workers for at least a year. Most of these people never had a normal conversation with a worker.
Winter is coming :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_UxViRTPc&ab_channel=JohnLombardo

The way I see it, there's an easy test for this - how does Yanks feel about two women kissing?

What would that prove?

homo = same

Woman+woman is homo just like man+man, no?

So if I dislike only one variation of homosexuality it's gotta be about something else, no?

"homo = same

Woman+woman is homo just like man+man, no?"

I am pretty sure this is some kind of equivocation.

""homo = same

Woman+woman is homo just like man+man, no?"

I am pretty sure this is some kind of equivocation."

I don't think it is. The argument is that a repulsion of man/man in the absence of a repulsion of woman/woman demonstrates an aesthetic dislike of man/man but not necessarily an objection to the idea of same sex kissing in and of itself.

I could list a few possible interpretations that are perfectly concordant with the above argument, but it's beside the point. I'm really not fond of people making (negative) assumptions about someone else's feelings and ideas as a default.

Interestingly female homosexuality is often seen less critically by less tolerant societies and legally unlike, male homosexuality, either not persecuted or punished less severely.

"I don't think it is. The argument is that a repulsion of man/man in the absence of a repulsion of woman/woman demonstrates an aesthetic dislike of man/man but not necessarily an objection to the idea of same sex kissing in and of itself."

I am struggling to think of an adequate analogy here but to me it comes down to context. Just because you fear or hate x in context a but not context b doesn't mean you don't fear or hate x. The human mind isn't a perfectly consistent mechanism - you could be disgusted by male homosexuality but not female, yet still be homophobic.

So if I am terrified and disgusted by rats when I see them in my living room, but not when I see them in the city park, does it follow that I am not, therefore, terrified and disgusted by rats?

Wow. Three unfathomably stupid @$$ off topic arguments spanning two episodes and generating gigantic walls of text that mean absolutely nothing. I would say it's a record, but knowing this board, it's probably not. The fact that some people care that some dude they've never met turns his head because he doesn't want to see two dudes smooching or notices that some woman gained weight is astounding. Magically, this means he's in need of some sort of chastising. Jesus Christ on a crucifix, find somewhere else to talk about this garbage.

Great post Quincy. I think that one will finally convince everybody to do what you want.

There is no harm done, by the way. Nobody will watch this show in a few years ergo these DSC comment sections are not going to matter.

I could say exactly the same about the self-righteous, false outrage you've expressed for half the page. In any case, didn't you say you weren't going to talk to me anymore? Could've sworn that was the case. It'd be great if you could be a person of your word.

@Quincy
"self-righteous, false outrage"
Now I could say the same to you. Spooky...

"didn't you say you weren't going to talk to me anymore?"
I have forgotten who you are.

Alright if Discovery keeps this up they’re on the right track. Initally I was like “omfg, what did they do to Star Trek?!” I have accepted the changes and thought this ep was pretty interesting. 8/10

@Booming:
"There is no harm done, by the way. Nobody will watch this show in a few years ergo these DSC comment sections are not going to matter."

Sure... other than a nice community of intelligent people being ruined by viciousness and hatred and mutual disrespect. No harm at all.

But don't you guys mind me. As Data once said:

"Please continue your petty bickering. I find it most intriguing"

(unless you don't enjoy it, in which case you can... you know... stop?)

Why do these people talk this way?

---
"didn't you say you weren't going to talk to me anymore?"
I have forgotten who you are.
---

regardless of anything else, this was one of the harshest shutdowns ive ever seen

@omega, yes, awesome!

I think of the immortal words of Ambassador Londo Mollari from Babylon 5 whenever I see @Booming and his boomlets fighting on this board,

https://youtu.be/Icn_mGnTy24?t=223

Ladies, ladies, please. Continue :-)

I just enjoy to mess with all these douchebags who love to portray themselves as freedom fighters. The moment one person utters one critical word they shout with holy fury:" You have no right to forbid what I can say!!!" Even though nobody can forbid anything here. What these people want is being shitty and face no backlash because of it. That's where I come in. Also badly thought out arguments rub me the wrong way.

What Yanks wrote is different. There is disharmony in his personality. On a rational level he has no problems with homosexuals but on a emotional level he does and it seemed to me that he would rather change the latter than the former. Getting rid of the affective part is not difficult it just takes a lot of time.

And about Quincy. I have so many arguments in so many message boards...

Jammer's wife calls BS on Booker and Burnham (power couple name BooBurn) never hooking up. I do, too.

Let's be real here, that Dettmer thing will come back in some episode. They dedicated so much to show that something was off with her. It would be really strange if that would just be dropped.

No communication between Titan and Earth? I dunno but shouldn’t it be possible to communicate albeit with a few hours delay? And intra solar system travel should be possible even without warp... Any opinions anyone?

yeah that makes no sense. If they had put these raiders/survivors on alpha centauri, that would have been a different story.

"I just enjoy to mess with all these douchebags [...] What these people want is being shitty and face no backlash because of it. That's where I come in."

No-one else enjoys it. No-one else enjoys watching you start argument after argument. And your definition of someone being a "douchebag" or "shitty" (aside from the fact no-one appointed you sole arbiter thereof) extends to the most innocuous comments - basically, anything that gives you an excuse to dive in. Quincy is completely right. At least you've finally admitted you do it for your own entertainment.

@Wolfstar

"No-one else enjoys it. No-one else enjoys watching you start argument after argument."

Unfortunately, this no longer seems to be true. Way too many regulars here have become fans of this 'sport', ever since this community got hit by what might be called "2020 madness fever" a couple of months ago.

Nice to have you back, by the way. I sorely missed your voice of reason when you were away.

"No-one else enjoys it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M76nPnaJ7G4

"At least you've finally admitted you do it for your own entertainment."
I stated that several times already.

I eventually watched on till the end (I always do, it's still Star Trek at the end of the day, which is still amazing after so much time passed without it), and I agree with Jammer, this was the best episode of the season so far, and the first Mandalorian emphasized how far short the first two episodes came up in the "sci-fi western" department.

It really comes down to "less is more", as cliched as that sounds. All episodes of The Mandalorian have been exercises in restraint and solid, logical structure. It's clear great expense was spent on making the episodes look good—Tatooine is a this point one of pop culture's most fully-realized fictional planets—but the creators clearly know precisely how far nifty visuals will get them without other strengths, and that's not that far.

Despite the headache-inducing nightmare that was the conclusion of season two, I remain an avid watcher of Discovery not because I love to hate it, but because in spite of its numerous flaws it is a typically diverting and at moments compelling viewing experience.

Unfortunately that's due in large part to the visuals. The sound design, on the other hand, has always pretty pedestrian and sometimes slapdash. Take the activation of Discovery's Spore Drive—you'll hear a goofy sound effect very similar to the alien fighters from the 1997 film Independence Day).

That, along with the anachronistic hodgepodge of bridge and computer sound effects, conspire with the insipid scriptwriting and aggressive lack of generosity in spreading around the characterization to basically hogtie an ensemble of talented actors. Even Doug Jones' Saru can only do so much with such hoaky, hoary dialogue. Similarly, the "Joss Whedon School of Witty Banter" can be an easy way for the audience to connect with characters, but is best expressed in small doses, not plugged directly into the bloodstream via IV. I don't wince when Burnham or Tilly burst into tears; I feel sorry for the actors for not having lines worthy of their skills, as TNG so often did.

The visuals are so good, it serves to highlight the show's many shortcomings and the rift in competency between them. Mandalorian isn't perfect, but it's more *balanced*, and its flaws aren't so overt in comparison to its strengths that it detracts from my viewing experience.

While on the topic of "less is more", the size of the cast in general is another flaw in Discovery. Detmer, Rhys, Bryce, and Owosekun remain, to me, glorified versions of TNG's random redshirted Helmsperson of the Week. By season three, all of TNG's ensemble cast had been given either main plots or at least enough shades of characterization within episodes to get a good idea of who they are. These four are regular members of the bridge crew, and yet beyond their general duties I still have no clue who they are.

Disposable crewmen weren't an issue in TNG, as the Enterprise had a massive crew; it became much more of a problem in Voyager, as the realities of TV casting meant the nobodies were constantly rotating in and out despite the vast distance from Federation space.

With Disco we again have a situation where every person matters, because they each made the individual decision to leave their timeline behind for the good of the universe. Yes, that's ridiculous, but when people make that choice one would hope you'd, I dunno, *know and care who these people are*, or that they'd at the very least register as people and not just automatons pressing buttons and shouting reports.

Little attempts were made here and there in season two, but it was too little too late, as the massive plot dumps drowned out any meaningful characterization. If anything, the scraps we got about these forgotten Disco crew members just made things worse, since they simply scratched the surface of who these folks were and did nothing else with it. Airiam is the most egregious example. Not only was she suddenly re-cast, but turned into a literal plot device and sacrificed.

Even Tasha Yar had more to say and do before she decided to leave the show and was unceremoniously killed off. When I first watched TNG as a kid I liked Yar, and when she died, even though it was "an empty death...a death without purpose", her loss hit me hard. Airiam's got a ceremonious death, but because she was a virtual stranger it fell flat.

If you're not going to put the work into your ensemble cast, you shouldn't *have* one, or it should be much smaller. Frankly it would have been better if Detmer, Owosekun, Bryce and Rhys had simply stayed behind in the 23rd century. It's highly doubtful any of them will even get a Tasha Yar's amount of characterization before the third season is out. Burnham, Saru, and the main plot simply take up too much space.

@ Jammer

" My wife calls BS" .... lol

Nice review. I understand your rating, I just enjoyed it too much I guess.

@Matt

"The way I see it, there's an easy test for this - how does Yanks feel about two women kissing?"

Not sure how this is a test, but I'll play.

It doesn't bother me like two dudes doing it.

@MarkG..Thanks so much for your response and for your suggested counter perspective! I suppose and im no expert on history or osychology so I have nothing else to say ,but my thing is i was really expecting and hoping to see new and wondrous aliens and alien phenomena in the 31s century, were you not? And thise raiders had unique abd imaginstive now i hindsight helmets such that I thought we were meeting new unique nonhumanoid aliens, not Christopher Heyerdahl underneath..And even if this story is plausible i think it's true it's not very original,especially for Trek. This is a standard TOS or TNG story template..I want somethibg bew and wondrous in the 31st century..oike3mostnofnseason 2 except for the ending...see what I mean?

@Quincy, why are liquid hydrocarbons patently absurd??

@Leif "@Quincy, why are liquid hydrocarbons patently absurd??"

This is the absolute LAST question I expected you to ask after reading this: "i was really expecting and hoping to see new and wondrous aliens and alien phenomena in the 31s century"

And not to mention this: "I want somethibg bew and wondrous in the 31st century."

But I'll bite. We can only guess which liquid hydrocarbons he's talking about, but petroleum, fuel oil, ethanol, butanol, etc are some common liquid hydrocarbons. You're telling me you don't see the absurdity of anyone from the 31st century needing to research liquid hydrocarbons? They have NUCLEAR FUSION. In fact, it's common place. This is as stupid as the robots in the Matrix needing humans as batteries when they had nuclear fusion.

Liquid hydrocarbons should be completely obsolete, if, we're lucky within the next 80 years. If we're still researching them in the 31st century, we won't be researching anything in the 31st century, because corpses don't do research.

IMO this is an excellent episode.

Trek is at its best when its showrunner is a genuine auteur. And so Roddenberry and Coon forged TOS into something special, TNG "grew a beard" with Michael Piller, and DS9 defined itself when Ira Behr was given free reign.

I don't want to jinx things, but it looks like new showrunner Michelle Paradise has significantly turned this show around. If Piller made TNG “grow a beard”, then we may one day say the same about Michelle Paradise: she made “Discovery” “grow its dreadlocks”.

Yes, Alex Kurtzman – who together with super hack Akiva Goldsman turned season's 1 and 2 into total trash – still has an Executive Producer role. But he now shares this title with Paradise, and only has co-writing credits on the first two episodes of this season. With those episodes gone, one feels as though Kurtzman can now no longer hurt us (unless he forces his writers to "tie in" to "Picard" somehow).

And so given control of the season, Michelle Paradise has decided to assemble a team of mostly female writers. There are some fresh men, and Alan McElroy remains (a Kurtzman pick, responsible for "Halloween 4", but thankfully paired with co-writers), but this is now largely a woman's show on-screen, and in the writer's room as well.

Most of these new writers are thankfully weird. How weird? DC Fontana weird. Science fiction weird. Ira Behr's blue beard weird. And so you have Hugo nominated writers, the daughter of Sidney Lumet, multi-lingual Koreans, and Paradise herself, previously notable for her work in New Queer cinema. The only lady here I'm skeptical of is Trek novelist Kirsten Beyer, who helped ruin “Picard” and who tends to write fan-fiction level Trek. She's given the seventh episode, “Unification 3”, all to herself. Will she pull it off?

Regardless, you sense that these are not the kinds of writers whose natural instincts would lead to anything resembling "Discovery" season 1 and 2. And already with this episode, the first one freed from Kurtzman's grip, you see a kinder and gentler show.

Michael Burnham is herself softer. She's less overbearing, she's likeable, she has great chemistry with Book, they joke affectionately, her jokes are kinder, and she does gracious things, like immediately turns the Captaincy over to Saru.

And you see Paradise putting so much more effort into creating an ensemble. This feels like a crew. Saru feels like a captain. Detmer and Bryce have started feeling like crewmen. The cast chemistry, and dialogue flow, just feels so much more better than what has come before.

The direction is also much more restrained, and aside from the CGI shots of space ships, no longer prone to outlandish camera work (Frakes, who directed this episode, can't help himself in one scene, his camera madly spinning).

There are other neat little changes. Past Trek, which salivated over women's bodies and was proud of Shatner's gut, has now embraced the female gaze, not afraid to gawk at Book's naked torso. Then there's a character called Adira Tal, a non-binary Trill (I think?), played by Blu del Barrio. Adira is instantly likeable, and the character's interactions here with Stamets are great. This feels like a gentler, more affectionate Stamets, finally free from all of Kurtzman's high-stakes madness.

Then there's the music, which is more playful, even childish in places.

The sisterly feeling that Brian Fuller captured well in his “Discovery's” season one pilot (The Michael and Phillipa show we all secretly wanted), is also resurrected. Gone is Kurtzman's version of Girl Power - a crass, vulgar thing, women punching people in the face and saving the world - replaced instead with a quieter, sisterly affection. Women talk. Women think. Women solve problems with a handshake and the building of a bridge.

The show is also a bit self-referential, acknowledging its past problems. Michael runs off to save the day, but only with Book at her side, and later she acknowledges that such actions are "something she has to learn to stop doing".

Significantly, this discussion takes place beside the telescope we saw in Fuller's season 1 pilot, when Michael turned her back on her crew and executed a Vulcan Hello all on her own. The implication is clear: Burnham, a woman who keeps running off alone, is now a woman learning to be a team player.

And of course the season's arc is itself about whole solar systems and planets (including Earth) learning to become team players. As Michael rebuilds her connections with the crew, and helps forge that typical Trek ensemble, so too do entire civilizations rebuild a galactic-wide ensemble.

One must remember the context in which this season was written. Trump's America has pulled out of the Paris Climate Deal, left the World Health Organization, pulled funding from the UN, weakened ties with neighbors and allies in Europe, and built all kinds of literal and psychosocial walls.

These stances and actions echo the behavior of populist movements across the world, from Brexit in the UK, to religious conservatives in Poland, to Hindu nationalists in India, to far right movements blossoming across Asia and South America. “Discovery” was written at a point in history when financial muscle has begun assuaging popular resentment toward globalism and neoliberal capitalism, by funneling a kind of "isolationist" hate toward brothers and neighbors. Indeed, the divisions of the Trump era are nothing compared to what's coming next. The Pentagon are already predicting weird ethno-religious wars across most of the world in the coming decades (exasperated by climate change), and futurologists anticipate American's growing Latino/Catholic population becoming weaponized by Republicans and primed by wedge issues (abortion etc), leading to all kinds of weird racial conflicts in the US as well; blacks against latinos, educated whites against suburban whites etc etc.

And so what Michelle Paradise gives is the opposite. Gone is Trump-Trek - with its divisions, its wars, its MAGA Klingons - and in is Biden Trek. Earth in the year 3188 has not only exited the Federation (like the US has “exited” the World Health Organization, the Paris Deal and defunded the UN), but cut itself off from its nearest neighbor, a little colony existing on Saturn's moon of Titan.

Rebuilding old alliances, and rekindling old familial relations, is the crew of the Discovery, a band of mostly black and Asian folk, women and queers (led by a lesbian showrunner) who reach out and shake the hands of an old white guy living on Titan. The political overtones are obvious. The kinds of bridge-building being implied, very contemporary, but also epitomizing a more timeless Trek humanism.

Fittingly the episode ends with our heroes hugging a Tree in California, California being the last stand of the hippies, the tree huggers and the flower power movements, all groups which influenced Roddenberry. But while this episode ends on a utopian moment, you sense that the real world won't play out so rosey. TOS ended in 1967. Martin Luther King was shot in 68.

Michelle Paradise airs “People of Earth”, an episode in which the crew of the “Discovery” make their first successful attempt to bring two rivaling groups together, on October 29, 2020.

"and in is Biden Trek."
and like Biden also 900 years old. (Sorry, somebody had to make that joke, better leave it to a responsible person... I mean myself)

Holy crap, @Trent, the only thing missing from your write up is to remind people that three months after Sisko sings "The Best is Yet to Come," he jumps off a cliff, never to be seen again!

https://youtu.be/6hPrxYRzuAg

@Leif
Indeed it will be nice to see some new alien races. Although a lot of people are curious to see what 900 years passing has meant for all our familiar races.

@Booming, were you replying to my Titan/Earth comment? If so you might want to use @Peter Swinkels. It makes it easier to see who is replying to who.

@Peter Swinkels
No, that was meant for Yanks.

Trent that was beautifully written but...you lost me when you brought red/blue politics into it. Classic trek has always appealed to those across the political spectrum, because of its optimism and humanism. You calling this "Biden" trek is divisive and uncalled for. I respect your opinions, but if you truly want to be inclusive, that is not the way to do it.

I quit Discovery after season 1, never bothered with the second. When it comes to Jammer's site I've been mostly lingering around threads for shows that haven't been on air for more than 20 years. Lately, however, I've been hearing that Discovery's third season is showing some improvement so I decided to have a peek at these threads and oh boy was I in for a surprise. A large portion of the debate has gone straight to hell, but I guess this is what happens when you discuss a show whose producers keep touting it as a 'platform for an xy agenda.'

Thankfully, there is still a number of very insightful comments and I have decided, at least for the time being, that I will not be returning to this series. Regardless, it's always nice to see some old familiar names and to read their reviews. Stay safe, guys.

@Booming: I see. thx.

Let me get this straight, the whole episode is supposed to be about Earth but the crew spends less than two minutes screen time on the planet. Wouldn’t this have been a good opportunity to look up Earth’s timeline, the whereabouts of any of the crew’s descendants, and maybe research some technology that could come in handy in this era? It’s baffling that none of this is done. Instead, Captain Saru gives an artificial deadline to the Earth away mission. The defunct Federation has already waited fifteen years for help — a day or two more wouldn’t hurt.

Who writes this stuff?

Agree Detmer’s disorientation is a red herring, especially because of Dr. Culber’s opening monologue in the next episode.

One thing that bothered me about this episode is that not only did Earth leave the Federation they pulled back from the rest of the Sol system? That seems a bit much. Even before joining the Federation United Earth controlled Sol as well as several other systems directly. I guess the other systems might have become independent within the UFP and I was never clear on if Mars was independent from United Earth within the UFP framework but maybe this means they were? I would assume by now whatever damage was done to Mars at the end of the 24th century would have long since been corrected so I would be curious to know what is going on in the rest of the Sol system because there were expansive colonies and space stations throughout it. It seems hard to believe that Earth would abandon all of it, it is not like you need warp drive to go from Earth to Mars or to Jupiter Station.

Re: The alien unmasking

Reminded me of:

“Old Man Winters?”

“Jinkies!”

reading the comments, how any of you can stand the relentless over emotional scenes, that truly drag and drag, is beyond me. I see endlessly, the crew,especially burnham, breaking down in tears and having a stretched out staring contest with eachother from multiple diferent camera angles and massive pauses between sentences. GOD, its so SO lame. if you did this once in a while maybe it would have gravitas but my god, every episode, endlessly, i'm gonna have to skip it next time, it literally doesn't add anything to the story or emote any empathy whatsoever.

They didn't utilize Earth for anything important and we didn't even get to see it. An utter waste of an episode. So much time was spent on hand holding, AGAIN. I am so tired of these excessively emotional and pointless scenes. They drag on and on. They could've traded 10 minutes of that repetitive claptrap for actual time on Earth. Of course, that would mean that the producers would actually have to envision a 32nd century Earth and that would be just too damn creative for them.

I couldn't read all the comments, so if this has been pointed out, apologies, but:

I believe the word you want is "hoards" not
"hordes".

Hoards = saves up even when not necessary

Hordes= a bunch

To make matters word, "hoard" is also a noun for a stash of something. A single dragon hoards. Hordes of dragons hoard hordes of hoards.