Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x03 - "Context is for Kings"

[Boomer359]

Lorca doesn't strike me as the type of fellow who much cares if "new way to travel" is technically the correct term, so long as "new way to fly" sounds better in that delicious drawl. (It does.)

Indeed. That he said Saru and Burnham sailed together aboard the Shenzhou seems to indicate that his use of certain language is something of an affectation.

 

[Nyotarules]

The open xenophobia displayed by Michael's fellow prisoners. I thought that was a thing of the past?

Exhibit A Leonard McCoy M.D

 

[Tomalak]

Exhibit A Leonard McCoy M.D

And "Guess who's coming to dinner", or the ship full of racist Vulcans in DS9.

 

[BillJ]

Starfleet uses breath scans for highly sensitive areas. Right... Even though it can be construed to have been a ruse for Michael, that would have seemed far too obvious.

It would've been gross for Burnham to rip out Tilly's eyeball for a retina scan.

 

[cultcross]

That's how I took that - what kind of biometric could we have that will allow sneaking in but without being totally gross?

 

[BillJ]

...without being totally gross?

I guess that rules out a stool sample!

 

[GeekUSACarl]

It would've been gross for Burnham to rip out Tilly's eyeball for a retina scan.

Simon Phoenix approves

 

[MvRojo]

The breath scan has basis in science, so it didn't bother me too much. That it was so easy to trick was kinda lame though.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-breath-is-as-unique-as-your-fingerprint-16068566/

 

[Ensign Mas]

It would've been gross for Burnham to rip out Tilly's eyeball for a retina scan.

Well, there was quite a lot of gore to go around in the episode so I don't think that would've been far too excessive... But then I liked Tilly. :P

 

[BillJ]

Well, there was quite a lot of gore to go around in the episode so I don't think that would've been far too excessive... But then I liked Tilly. :P

An eye patch would ruin the sweetness she is supposed to exude.

 

[BillJ]

It is clear that Lorca sees himself as a "King".

 

[bookworm8571]

It is clear that Lorca sees himself as a "King".

Captains are very much rulers of their domains, so yeah, he is the king of his secret Section 31 star ship. Sometimes ethics just get in the way in war time.

 

[BillJ]

Captains are very much rulers of their domains, so yeah, he is the king of his secret Section 31 star ship. Sometimes ethics just get in the way in war time.

I think he sees himself as more than just king of his domain. He has bigger plans.

 

[Ometiklan]

That's how I took that - what kind of biometric could we have that will allow sneaking in but without being totally gross?

How about a hand print? Could take that from any flat surface in their quarters. Could even get a retina scan from from some kind of scanning equipment.

I think they should update the security to a full-body scan for DNA, height, weight, renta, etc. etc.

 

[DigificWriter]

I'm really not seeing where all this "Section 31" stuff is coming from; at this point, it's purely conjecture without anything onscreen to even suggest it.

 

[BillJ]

I'm really not seeing where all this "Section 31" stuff is coming from; at this point, it's purely conjecture without anything onscreen to even suggest it.

Really?

 

[DigificWriter]

Black Starfleet badges don't automatically mean "Section 31", nor does the combination of the numbers 1, 0, 3, and 1 in the ship's registry number.

 

[Longinus]

I'm really not seeing where all this "Section 31" stuff is coming from; at this point, it's purely conjecture without anything onscreen to even suggest it.

This is another reason (besides the Section 31 being a terrible idea that should have never happened) why I really hope it has nothing to do with this. It would be no surprise, everyone is already expecting it.

 

[XCV330]

The breath scan has basis in science, so it didn't bother me too much. That it was so easy to trick was kinda lame though.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-breath-is-as-unique-as-your-fingerprint-16068566/

What starfleet security system hasn't been lame?

"they've locket out the controls captain!"

"they've overriding the airlock"

"they've bypassed the override"

"they broke through our quantum thingy encryption"

"this ship we stole with the universe's most devastating weapon has a remote console accessed by a 5 digit plain text pasword that every other starship has a copy of"

 

[JD]

Of course it's sci fi and adventure but the CHIEF difference, in context, between it and Trek is that it's a comedy show by a career comedy writer. In fact I would say it's MORE of a comedy series, that seems to be it's main focus. Everything in it, almost everything is a MacFarlane style joke, which I love,

but clearly it's being sold on the comedy angle.

I wouldn't say everything in it is a joke,

Spoiler: details from the last episode of The Orville.

Bortus and his mate not getting along wasn't a joke, Alara getting shot wasn't a joke, the dude getting beaten in the street wasn't a joke, and Grayson getting the crap beat out of her wasn't a joke, the people on the bioship seeing the stars for the first time wasn't a joke.

I'll be starting my reviews of the Star Trek Discovery episodes with the third episode as it's still fresh in mind. This was pretty bad. It's as if the people behind the show aren't familiar with Star Trek at all.

One gripe I have is that the error that started with the Abrams movies is reproduced in this show: The viewscreen. As the original Star Trek Writer's Guide stated: "This is not a window" (and which was alluded to the TNG writers), still every ship we see has a window. A minor, but annoying, issue.

Just because that's the way they did it in the other shows, doesn't mean that's the only way they can do it. The holographic overlay let it serve all of the functions of the viewscreen on the old shows, and it's a lot more interesting visually than a giant TV in the front of the bridge.

We also see at least two or three androids though Data was the first android in Starfleet (TNG: Encounter at Farpoint).

We don't know enough about them to be able to say this is a contradiction. We don't even know for sure that the person on the Shenzou was an android, it could have just been a person wearing a helmet or something. As for blue woman on the Discovery, we know absolutely nothing about her so she could be almost anything at this point.

What I've found to be the most objectionable so far is that Star Trek always has painted an optimistic picture of the future. I think what's being served here is yet another borderline dystopian vision of the kind that most franchises are made with today and I think some optimism really is what is needed now.

Very much disagree here, it might be a bit darker than what the other Trek series have been, but it's still pretty clearly set in the same positive future as the other shows. It's focus is on using science to work toward an end of a war, and a character who has fallen very low working to redeem herself. I'd say that's still pretty optimistic.

• Some damage to the Glenn's CG model wouldn't have hurt...

  Why would the outside of the ship have been damaged? Everything happened inside the ship, it's not like they were attacked or anything.

I don't mind that they've modernized the look and feel of the series compared to the old shows(to some degree, holograms have not been used in earlier shows), but I think the creators should drop all pretense that this is set in the Prime universe as it departs far too much to the classic Star Trek shows (they feel disregarded) and doesn't feel like Star Trek to me.

We still haven't really seen enough to totally rule out this taking place in the Prime Universe, so far most of the differences are purely due to updated asthetics, and none of it is really any more drastic than the difference between TOS and The Motion Picture. We really only saw a small fraction of the universe and only got fairly vague worldbuiling in TOS, so I don't think there's really anything totally ruling out what we've seen so far in Discovery happening 10 years before TOS.