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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x04 - "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"

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Burnham. I also and kind of miffed people don't understand why she killed T'Kumva. He just killed her best friend. That shouldn't be hard to figure. Battle situation. Plus plenty of precedent for less reason. Scotty started fights because someone insulted the Enterprise FFS. I think that is just a part of who she is. She tries to be logical & dispassionate, but sometimes she fails. She's human. Sometimes she succeeds when she shouldn't. She rates low on the interpersonals. Raised by Vulcans.

I get it. I just think it's contrived and stupid. She kills him when she doesn't have to, even though the whole point of going there was to capture him and prevent a war. Her mentor gives her life for that plan and Burnham throws it all away. And she's supposed to be influenced by Vulcans?

Basically, she's willing to let millions die because she wants revenge. That's absolutely un-Trek like, at least for the non-villainous characters. Long way from Kirk trying to save a Klingon who was trying to kill him after causing the death of Kirk's son.
 
I think I'm finally starting to get an inkling that this is a Trek show and not another generic Sci Fi series. Some quick thoughts.

  • The plotline with "Ripper" is gonna be very interesting and I'm excited to see how it turns out for Burnham.
  • Good riddance Landry.
  • I still love Tilly
  • The Klingons are starting to interest me. The words "palace intrigue on the Klingon homeworld" come to mind
I couldn't stand Landry either. glad she's gone
 
I get it. I just think it's contrived and stupid. She kills him when she doesn't have to, even though the whole point of going there was to capture him and prevent a war. Her mentor gives her life for that plan and Burnham throws it all away. And she's supposed to be influenced by Vulcans?

Basically, she's willing to let millions die because she wants revenge. That's absolutely un-Trek like, at least for the non-villainous characters. Long way from Kirk trying to save a Klingon who was trying to kill him after causing the death of Kirk's son.

It's hard to make a story about regret, atonement, and recovering after a failure if you don't fail.

Even if they ate Captain Georgiou, that wouldn't make them cannibals, as Georgiou is a different species of animal to Klingons.

Eh, Klingons can have sex with humans and have children so blame the Preservers.

"Everyone's human."
 
Sorry about the security officer, she had potential and was a good actress. But I was not surprised, as this is the first post Game of Thrones Trek series, and she was not in the opening credits. But they better not kill Lorca.

Was happy to see Michelle Yeoh listed as a guest star, and was really good to see her again.

Klingon scenes are still a drag.

Definitely got the vibes to Devil in the Dark.

I liked Stamets in this episode. I haven't been following the gay stuff too much. Are Stamets and the doctor going to be a couple?

Airiam speaks, she had a line this week!!

The scene of Voq aboard Shinzhou was nicely done and creepy.
So lorca gets captured by Klingons and runs into Harry Mudd, should be interesting
 
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Right, but you can fail in a believable, compelling way. The moral dilemma should leave the audience torn on the decision, or at least able to appreciate the choice. Instead, we get straight-up murder.

If she DIDN'T kill T'Kuvma, I don't think the weight of her guilt would be believable. Spock and Kirk assaulted crew members and mutineed all the time.
 
But I've been watching TNG a lot the last week, just watched "Darmok" today. And to follow up something that masterful with the wreck that is Discovery just makes Discovery an even more bitter pill to swallow.

Interestingly the writer who wrote Darmok, Joe Menosky, is on the Discovery writing staff.
 
If she DIDN'T kill T'Kuvma, I don't think the weight of her guilt would be believable. Spock and Kirk assaulted crew members and mutineed all the time.
Honestly, her killing T'Kuvma was one of the better points of that episode, IMO. If, in the heat of battle, I saw an enemy, THE enemy, stab my best friend through the heart, you bet your ass I'd have fired that phaser on kill setting, whether I realized it or not.
 
If she DIDN'T kill T'Kuvma, I don't think the weight of her guilt would be believable. Spock and Kirk assaulted crew members and mutineed all the time.

For me, it would have been more compelling if she had successfully fired on the Klingons and started the war. Having her murder that guy just for revenge, at the cost of thousands of lives, adds a shade of darkness I can't see the character escaping. I don"t see an emotionally unstable mutineer and murdereress being suitable for command, no matter what she does here on out.
 
For me, it would have been more compelling if she had successfully fired on the Klingons and started the war. Having her murder that guy just for revenge, at the cost of thousands of lives, adds a shade of darkness I can't see the character escaping. I don"t see an emotionally unstable mutineer and murdereress being suitable for command, no matter what she does here on out.
That would, by its very nature, eliminate Kirk and Spock. Hell, it eliminates Picard, Sisko, and Janeway, too. Sisko, who is one of my favorite Star Trek Captains of all time, got an entire empire to go to war with the Dominion based on false information. Janeway willingly murdered potential thousands, millions even, by changing the timeline so her crew could arrive home sooner. Picard sought revenge on the Borg, almost sending his whole crew down with the ship.
 
Honestly, her killing T'Kuvma was one of the better points of that episode, IMO. If, in the heat of battle, I saw an enemy, THE enemy, stab my best friend through the heart, you bet your ass I'd have fired that phaser on kill setting, whether I realized it or not.

We can be better than that. That's the fundamental message of Star Trek. Or was.
 
Kirk once threatened to execute General Order 24 and wipe out the entire inhabited surface of a civilized planet and Scotty stood ready to implement the order had Kirk not been able to scare the Eminians into acquiescing to his plans to end their computerized war with Vendikar. And knowing Kirk, I am not entirely certain that he wouldn't have followed through to make his point.
 
Still debating my rating but it'l be in the 6-7 range. I'm having a difficult time understanding 9-10 or 1-3 ratings (but then, that's why I'm trying to read all these posts).

I'm guessing Ripper is sentient. He's their own space whale! Now they need to add Amy Pond (new security chief?).

The Klingons are dragging the show down. The slow speech sounds wrong - they'd be far better off just speaking English.

I liked Lorca in this ep and I liked the ending. If it's going to be more action-oriented Trek, then give us some space battles!

Burnham isn't being nice to anyone. Not Saru, who probably has a lot of say in how pleasant her life onboard is. Not even Tilly, who's being much nicer to Burnham than she seems to deserve.

My big complaint is the logical inconsistencies.

Why did Voq admit that his ship was still helpless? If he was going to trust someone, why not ask for help ages ago?

Why didn't the two shroom-ships share information? Even if they thought the experiments were safe, there's a war on. We saw the two scientists talking but they didn't actually share the critical info?

Why were they so incredibly careless with Ripper, not giving the sedative any time to work, let alone checking on it?
 
Kirk once threatened to execute General Order 24 and wipe out the entire inhabited surface of a civilized planet and Scotty stood ready to implement the order had Kirk not been able to scare the Eminians into acquiescing to his plans to end their computerized war with Vendikar. And knowing Kirk, I am not entirely certain that he wouldn't have followed through to make his point.
Kirk had balls the size of dilithium crystals. I believe he would have done it.
 
-- Why wasn't Stamets more aware of what was going on with the Glenn? Wasn't he partners with the lead scientist on that vessel? It seems like they should have been in some form of communication...

-- Why do we have no sense of the relationship between Captain and First Officer yet? It's weird to me that the relationship of Saru and Lorca is such a blank. I have no sense of how they relate to each other -- Trek has always made such a big deal about captain's selection of first officer, and I have no clue why Lorca would pick Saru, they seem like such a terrible match.

-- Tilly, A CADET, steals a bunch of highly classified spores and takes them to Burnham. It all turned out fine, but that seemed like a pretty extreme action to just gloss over so quickly, especially from someone of her rank.

-- And the sarcophagus ship Klingons have just been hanging out in the same spot for 6 months? That was such an awkward way to pause their narrative, while SO MUCH else has gone on with all our other characters...

- The Glenn: Starfleet separated the two spore drive creators to get two independent lines of research working. So if one team gets stuck, the other team won't necessarily because it has been taking an entirely different approach. Stamets friend from the Glenn was only telling him generalities because he wasn't allowed to disclose specifics.

- CO/XO relationship: This series is being told from a non-captain/non-senior officer perspective. We aren't supposed to know everything about what is going on - kinda like actually being a crewman on such a ship. Secondly, Lorca keeps himself a mystery to a lot of the crew. Third, Lorca hinted at why he has Saru as XO, for the opposite reason he has Burnham onboard. Where Burnham will make those intuitive leaps, violating orders if neccessary, to get the job done, Lorca has no wish for that from his XO. Saru is a by the book kind of guy who won't buck Lorca's commands.

- Tilly: like the rest of hte crew, Lorca expects everyone to do their best and get him his results. He likely knows that Tilly took the spores (just as he knew Burnham broke in to the spore bay), and its fine as long as it is advancing the mission. Heck, he probably would ahve been just fine with it if either Burnham or Tilly had just requested permission - as long as it was advancing his agenda.

- The Klingons: agreed it was awkward that it took them exactly 6 months to get moving again.

...1. Why did they rescue the telescope and leave the ship? Ditto the Klingons leaving T'Kumva's ship. For 6 months. Rally around him & start a war? Yep. Leave his followers to starve & abandon the only ship you have with a cloak for 6 months? Silly. Ditto Starfleet. You went back for the Telescope but left the Klingon flagship? Take it & try to undetstand the cloak. This was beyond stupid...

The telescope: Saru or someone else likely took it along as important to the Captain as they were evacuating the ship. Since it was a family heirloom, which Saru probably knew, he knew it should be returned to Georgiou's family. Starfleet didn't return to get it.

The 6 month pause: I think Starfleet didn't return to the system because they had to evacuate the system because of the immediate attack of the Klingons en mass all along the Klingon border. Less understandable is the Klingon's failure to return sooner. They obviously can return (though maybe, maybe, there was something else that was holding them back until now?), and they should have made it a high priority with the cloaking device so important.
 
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