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

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One thing I would like to applaud this show for getting right: how the women are dressed.

In every Trek so far, there have been blatant attempts at sex appeal and how the women are dressed. Especially the hotties.

On TOS all the female crew were in short skirts. Ah, look at the progress we have made. At least it was uniform. In TNG Troi gets an exemption to wear tight fitting suits & low cut dresses. DS9 was the best of the bunch. Though Kira's unis were pretty form fitting at least they were like the other Bajorans'. Kes & Seven in VOY and T'Pal in Enterprise was blatant.

I am glad that is gone.

That's actually a really good point, you know. I didn't even think about that. I wonder how the alt-right takes it, though. "Bunch of SJWs won't let me have my Trek cleavage, rar Breitbart blerrgh."
 
This show seems to be getting lots of criticism for the exact same things that already happened before in Trek but nobody ever complained about. What's the deal? :rolleyes:

Kor

People have to scrape to find stuff to criticize the series for.
 
Ed Mercer said: it's the Trek that America deserves.

I think no one is taking the bait
It was not "bait" for anything but rather a joke because clearly Ed doesn't like Discovery, which is totally fine. But, with such an opened-ended statement, I obviously couldn't resist!
 
That must have been a different episode. In Battle at the Binary Stars, she switches her phaser in an instant and fires at the guy stabbing her Captain. The whole thing lasts a second or two at most. What you describe just didn't happen.

Maybe my copy ran slower, but it looked more calculated than that.

I just looked at it again -- I don't think it's the deliberate, considered choice some posters are describing, but to me, the way that scene was edited, the shot that immediately precedes the firing of the phaser is included for the purposes of showing us that Burnham is making a decision to shoot to kill. It's quick, but it does read to me as a moment of decision, which has been included in the edit for some reason.

If it's supposed to convey an instinctive choice in the heat of hand-to-hand combat, I think it was a failure in the editing process, because that's definitely not what I see -- I think you'd want to cut it even quicker for that to be the effect.

Which is also not to say I see a clear murder. I do hope we get to see Burnham struggle at some point with whether her decision was a defensible tactical choice that just played out wrong, or whether in the moment she fired she was being motivated just by vengeance.
 
One thing I would like to applaud this show for getting right: how the women are dressed.

In every Trek so far, there have been blatant attempts at sex appeal and how the women are dressed. Especially the hotties.

On TOS all the female crew were in short skirts. Ah, look at the progress we have made. At least it was uniform. In TNG Troi gets an exemption to wear tight fitting suits & low cut dresses. DS9 was the best of the bunch. Though Kira's unis were pretty form fitting at least they were like the other Bajorans'. Kes & Seven in VOY and T'Pal in Enterprise was blatant.

I am glad that is gone.

Only thing I disagree with here is that Kes never really wore a catsuit. She didn't wear normal Starfleet uniforms, but she was always dressed pretty modestly.
 
They probably weren't planning on him stabbing Georgiou in the chest. That rather heightened the immediate importance of stopping power, hence the kill setting.
War isn't like a simulation, or the perfectly executed mission - the show includes that very point. Burnham is great at theoretical plans, but made mistakes when there was blood.

"No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy” --German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke
 
One thing I would like to applaud this show for getting right: how the women are dressed.

In every Trek so far, there have been blatant attempts at sex appeal and how the women are dressed. Especially the hotties.

I love that our Communications Officer is now a hot eye-candy guy! That was a good choice... maybe they'll even give him some personality characteristics one day...

Only thing I disagree with here is that Kes never really wore a catsuit. She didn't wear normal Starfleet uniforms, but she was always dressed pretty modestly.

Kes was put into a catsuit for the last half of her last season, wasn't she? There is no escape for the Berman-era Trek woman! :brickwall:
 
I might have missed something upon further reflection. How does Stamets confirm that the SuperBeast communicates with the spores? It seemed like he just kind of watched it roam around, but did I miss something?
 
Finally watched it, will break it up into multiple posts if needed, here I go.

Love the panning shots we get in pretty much every episode, showing all the detail of a ship that is alive with crew, I wouldn't like to be the Window Cleaner I can tell you that.

Got a second good look at the saucer section at the start of the episode and the ship looks really big, the saucer alone looks like it could be 200m across on its own, maybe even more and that's without measuring it, its a bloody big ship for the time period considering its supposed to be the prime timeline.

Loved the almost atomic view of the uniform being made at the start, wondered what the hell it was at first, so Georgiou left her something, will see it later I guess.

Oh Saru you really need to wear a hat or something to hide your oh shit response, I would definitely like to play him at poker.

The more I see of Lorca the more I like him, his slow hand clap at the end of the battle drill is just right, typical Starfleet as usual far too polite even in the middle of a war, its no wonder Section 31 intervened in the Dominion War.

I like his weapon collection, interesting that a student of war like him would be placed as Captain of a science vessel, I think the entity captured from the Glenn should be called Sweep, its armor and claws are most impressive, if the Universe is the organism that would make the creature a type of bacteria or even an immune response.

All that before the intro has run, looking good so far.

Will continue in another post.
 
Doesn't explain why they would leave the cloaking device with them. Or did they know that Starfleet's so stupid that they would come back to retrieve a telescope but not bother with the cloaking device.
Maybe Sauru or some other crewmember retrieved a number of things from the Captain's ready room and quarters prior to abandoning ship. There was a funeral for Captain Georgiou that occurred and was spoken of that we the audience did see either; but it obviously happened.

As for why Klingons or Federation would leave the Cloaking device? The Federation fleet was decimated at the battle and they were probably more concerned with recovering anyone alive.

As for the Klingons? They were probably more concerned with following through and starting to wage the war before Star Fleet got organized. And unlike TNG where new tech gets instantly recognized, Kol wouldn't know cloaking tech if he saw it (much less how to integrate it); and Kol waited until T'Kuvma's former/Voq's current crew had managed to repair enough and also been demoralized enough that he could come back and get T'Kuvma's house members to defect and show him everything he needs to know.

It also may be that the Klingons don't have a 'centralized government' - IE You need help? Call the members of your House. Voq had no 'House' to call.
 
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Kes was put into a catsuit for the last half of her last season, wasn't she? There is no escape for the Berman-era Trek woman! :brickwall:

It was a little less dowdy than that layered outfit at the start of the show, but I wouldn't call it a catsuit.

scorpion2047.jpg
 
Burnham is making a decision to shoot to kill. It's quick, but it does read to me as a moment of decision, which has been included in the edit for some reason.
It's absolutely a decision, but I dispute that it is one of murderous revenge - at the time she makes it she doesn't yet know that Georgiou isn't savable. She turns the phaser to kill because it is the only way she can possibly save her. From a 'spectrum of use of force' perspective, it's an entirely defensible decision to use deadly force against deadly force.

The most I think she can be fairly accused of is that Georgiou's life meant more to her than completing the mission. Which as others have said, is a very human response and one worth exploring.
 
I just looked at it again -- I don't think it's the deliberate, considered choice some posters are describing, but to me, the way that scene was edited, the shot that immediately precedes the firing of the phaser is included for the purposes of showing us that Burnham is making a decision to shoot to kill. It's quick, but it does read to me as a moment of decision, which has been included in the edit for some reason.

Literally all she has to do is pull the trigger on her phaser to prevent a war. But, nah, better to go with murder.
 
Lorca tells him to finish fixing Stamets up and then gives him a separate direct order pertaining to something else involving the ship.

If he weren't the CMO, Lorca would've given that order to somebody else.

What order did he give after he tells him to finish fixing Stamets up - he moves from telling Culber to get his science officer back on his feet, and Stamets that he has blood on his hands directly into giving the inter-ship address.

What's the deal with Wilson Cruz's campiness? Is he normally that way or has he been told to play the character camp? I hope it's the former because I really don't want them to go down the "must have a camp gay character" route.

He seems to be playing the character with his natural mannerisms, judging by interviews. I don't have a problem with this - after all, we've got Stamets who isn't (as) camp with which to contrast him, to show that members of the gay community don't all behave like Will and Jack on Will & Grace.
 
Agreed. I get that they want to establish Klingons as true aliens, but the subtitles are doing it for me. And, I love foreign films so it's not a general disposition against subtitles. However, I think it has to do with that we can't see the actors faces emote, etc that it just makes these scenes drag a bit.

Same here. I hate the Klingon make up. Plus, all the scenes are just the Klingons standing there and talking very slowly with subtitles. The way the actors have trouble talking through the heavy make up is a problem.

You know what else is wrong with it? On top of the heavy prosthetics, on top of the unpleasant guttural language -- the dialogue itself is so difficult! Like, even translated into English, these would be extraordinarily difficult lines to land, far moreso than the Starfleet dialogue.

I think this is another of their supposed Klingon innovations, another way of emphasizing the alien-ness -- that their conversation is more dramatic and speech-like, not human-conversational.

But -- YOU JUST SHOULD NOT DO THAT MANY DIFFICULT THINGS AT ONCE.

I worked in casting for most of my professional life, so this drives me insane from that standpoint as well. Many times I have had to cast roles that involved dialogue in French or Spanish or whatever, and when you're going through that audition process it's just so clear -- the performance from non-native speakers will always be inhibited and held back. Then the actual French person comes in and the scene suddenly sings and the character totally pops. Most human brains just don't allow for performance to take flight when using a language that is not your own. The way they structured this ensured that the actors would fail.

But, at the same time, those Klingon scenes are visual art. They are gorgeous to look at. I pause just to look at it more closely. (Which is a good and bad thing -- ideally the production design should keep you engrossed and moving in the show, not driving you to literally stop it)

I wish I could just... redistribute the attention a little. Take about 30% of the energy spent on Discovery visuals, redirect that to improving the story, and then it would be perfect! I mean, this really is true:

The visuals are totally carrying it so far and might be the reason I'll continue to watch it.
 
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