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

Why not both? Can one not have compassion for all of the innocent who suffer? It's clear she's conflicted. "The needs of the many" obviously rings through her head, but that doesn't mean she has to like it, or comply with it for very long.

 

Excellent rebutalls!

 

No, I got all that but it's poor writing.

And the Klingons are the ones who can't make a distress call is my point.

 

I can see why you don't like DSC now.

I think we all got that telegram

One of us. One of us

Not for me. I voted how I felt.

They were all right. Getting better.

Lorca is Robau. When the Narada was sucked through the final black hole in 09 Robau was reborn.

I think the same can be said for Picard and Sisko, Heck without Shatner, Kirk would be Pike.

 

The show is set in the 23rd century. Their technobabble is still primitive and unrefined.

 

Horses have been abused, yes, and as civilization has advanced, we have become more aware of these abuses, and have created organizations to pursue those abusers. A post-scarcity society should not be so ready to sacrifice sentient beings on the altar of immediate want, even in times of war.

 

Yes, which makes him a ridiculous idealist who is not pragmatic enough to be a genuine threat to the heroes. It shows him as stupid and unwilling to do what is necessary to win. It's a bad bit of storytelling if we're supposed to buy this guy as a villain.

I generally disapprove of eating any sapient species.

He is failing as a cult leader given all of his cult abandons him.

Not really selling T'Kuvma's fanatical followers very well.

I saw the scenes and they paint our villains as idiots. Klingons deserve better.

 

I'm not so sure...

 

It's interesting you mention Doctor Who...I noticed how familiar the moans (of agony?) of Ripper sounded. Then I realized they sound almost exactly the same as the moans of "The Teller" in the Doctor Who episode Time Heist.

 

Cult leaders are charismatic, not as often brilliant. Of course, now he has someone who can see things from the outside in L'rell. He may become more dangerous yet.

Even with ketchup?

Cult leaders can only maintain their status if they keep everyone ignorant and hungry. Once the new guy arrives with promises of plenty, and can deliver, that cult is kaput. Usually.

Not selling anything, just explaining what's on screen.

Every alien race is an idiot when it suits the script. Ferengi, Romulans, Klingons, Andorians, Cardassians, Bajorans, doesn't matter, friend or foe, they all get the moron treatment every so often as to make our humans look better. It's a classic Star Trek storytelling trope.

 

I'd like to address some of the issues you raise, as one who has noticed the show's willingness to let things play out over time and not give us all the answers in one episode.

1. T'Kuvma is unwilling to concede anything to the Federation until he is made to realize that he has to, for the greater good; combat pragmatism at work.

2. Yes, it makes them more villainous, but they were also starving. The show acknowledges this fact, and we don't know that they would've done it if they had the choice.

3. The whole point of the moment is to show there's more going on with them than just being 2-dimensional stock villains. Frankly, I think we're meant to see parallels between the Klingons and the Federation, that neither side is absolutely what the other thinks they are.

4. Again, pragmatism in war. They backed the wrong horse, so to speak. T'Kuvma (and Voq) promised victory and unity, and only offered isolation and hunger, not to mention being sidelined from the actual conflict.

Incidentally, I tend to think that the cult of Kahless has value to the Empire in warfare, but not in leadership. In victory, they create a rallying point for the Empire (and the Great Houses) to pursue their own agenda, "in the name of Kahless". In defeat, he's a scapegoat who misled the people and will suffer dearly in Grethor for his sins.

 

I agree that the Shenzhou engine room scene was really well done. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but I was slightly amused when Voq says to L'Rell, "I am fortunate to have you", then they gaze into each other's eyes, and then L'Rell says "Shall we uncouple?" I don't know if the innuendo was intentional or not, but it made me chuckle.

 

I am absolutely convinced it was intentional.

 

My mind is filthy. I agree.

 

Well, I don't know what YOUR Star Trek is, but all the points you made were covered in past Trek. Maybe you just didn't (want to) realize it.

 

I can't scan through 18 pages of this...what did the Discovery leave behind to take out the remaining Birds of Prey? There were no orders about dropping anything off, and they look too long and skinny to be torpedoes, but they made the TOS torpedo sound. Can someone straighten that out for me? Thanks.

 

Gave it a 6.
Love the updated graphics.
Hate the counter spinning hulls.
Also the concept of organic travel (spores galore) everywhere in the universe...
a bit too much like Aladdin's Lamp. I'll watch I dream of Jeannie reruns when I want
magic in place of sci fi.
Klingons hard to listen to and their lengthy speeches are subtitled to quickly to read AND
absorb the visuals of the scene. Better when you watch with a pause switch. And since I'm on a gripe
campaign... it was totally unbelievable that Burnham and Georgiou were the only two to board the Klingon ship to take T'Kuvma hostage.
Such stupidity gets one or both served up on a Klingon menu... and rightly so.
Save the whales, toughen up the girls wuss out the boys, push social agendas on everyone and dare them to dislike it or comment on it.
If it weren't for the graphics and production I would have given it a 3.
And why Sarek? Why not a descendant of T'Pol? Or Soval? Lots of Vulcans learned to tolerate / appreciate humans enough to take in a ward (Burnham). Did it have to be Spock's daddy?
I'm done.

 

The Klingon scenes are still as boring as watching paint dry....and I say this as someone who watches a majority of subtitled movies. The show grinds to a damn halt when they're onscreen. I really don't like them.

Sickbay looked cool. In fact the overall design is what I like most about the show. They've really nailed the reimagining of the Trek aesthetic, combining JJ-verse stuff with Enterprise, and new things.

I didn't like that the security chief was killed but I saw it coming.

I love the new communications/hails with the hologram forms. Really cool.

Plot-wise this was pretty much classic Trek, but if they're doing a war storyline in this modern TV era, I'm waiting for them to REALLY dig into it, with every episode building on the last. We'll see what happens.

Overall 7/10.

 

I am 99% sure at this point that Lorca is working for Section 31 or something very similar to it. Everything about his attitude and the way he runs this ship hints at his command and his mission being not entirely kosher.

I remember this interesting quote from Malcolm Reed: "Apparently they sharpen their teeth before going into battle." It may not be blood libel at all, it could entirely be cultural: Klingons are apex predators on their planet, and through most of their antiquity probably didn't have a concept of "war" at all; fighting over the dominant position in a tribe is just part of a social landscape, while fighting over territory against a rival tribe would probably result in the looser being eaten by the winners.

Most Klingon houses (basically equivalent to nations at this point) would have moved away from this kind of behavior, but T'Kuvma's clan are fundamentalists and fanatics, so of course they're going back to the old traditional ways.

T'Kuvma's not a soldier or an admiral. He's technically not even part of the Empire. He's a religious fanatic who pulled off a remarkably well-timed publicity stunt only to have the whole thing totally blow up in his face. The rest of the great houses don't give two shits about him OR about his goofy little cult (which is actually kind of interesting, IMO) which is why when the battle was over and T'Kumva was dead, they pretty much rolled their eyes and left him and his fellow cult members drifting in space.

I actually think Kol didn't expect them to even still be alive at this point and had assumed they'd all starved to death in that busted up thousand-year-old jalopy they laughably call a starship. This band of lunatics isn't particularly impressive or even important, and the only reason anyone still cares about them is because T'Kuvma bought stock in Cloaks r Us before he got killed.

All in all, it's a different way of doing The Klingons. TOS and the movies gave them as space fascists with an inferiority complex. TNG turned them into hyper-masculine samurai bikers. Discovery seems to be showing us that you can't actually reduce the Klingons to ANYTHING AT ALL; they're space fascists, they're samurai bikers, they're ISIL jihadists, they're Klingon nationalists, they're warriors, they're cowards, they're geniuses, they're idiots, they're schemers, they're goons, and they haven't figured out what the hell they're really supposed to really be anyway, which is exactly why this war started in the first place.

The scene on the Glenn, interestingly enough, illustrates this point in a lot of ways. The one Klingon survivor they find on the ship is standing in the hallway, probably a little bit in shock; where TNG would have him shout a bunch of threatening-sounding Klingon nonsense like a warrior and TOS would put some weird "I knew it! Federation treachery! I bet this whole thing was a trap to lure us into your clutches so you can interrogate me!" But what does this Klingon do? He shushes them. Because he doesn't speak English, he doesn't what the ripper is, he doesn't know what the hell is going on; the only thing he knows is that he doesn't want to get eaten, and he's fucking scared.

That may be a small thing to you, but as with the above, what it all boils down to is a concerted attempt to portray Klingons as genuine characters with something approaching emotional depth and internal existence. So it isn't that the Klingons are eating their foes or cannibalizing their ships, it's that they're CONFLICTED about eating their foes and/or cannibalizing their ships. It isn't that the Klingons default to the violent warrior path because that's just the way they are; it's that the Klingons WANT to default to the violent warrior path because that's the way they've always been and they're scared of what they'll become if they don't. And yes, the Klingons are kind of stupid for not being able to fix their busted up ancient jalopy of a starship... and yeah, OTHER Klingons think that's pretty stupid too, and are probably mocking T'kuvma's legacy for his followers being so amazingly incompetent.