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

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I found the episode enjoyable for the most part. But the klingon need to speak english. I feel like I am watching a foreign film with subtitles. In am a slow reader and can't keep up.
 
Strongly disagree, as this is definitely not that kind of show. The main reason is, Lorca isn't the kind of character who could reasonably offer Burnham a shot at (Genuine) redemption, and this is a deliberate choice by the writers. Saru hints at this in his reaction to Burnham's little experiment in the lab when he says "I was wrong. You'll fit in perfectly here!" This is Saru indirectly referencing the fact that Discovery is being captained by a sociopath whose intentions are far from honorable. So Unless Burnham is planning on leapfrogging the entire chain of command and/or leading yet another mutiny (it IS kind of her thing, but still) "rising through the ranks" just isn't how this is going to work.

Really, Burnham has as much a shot at being captain of the Discovery as James Bond has at replacing M. She's not that kind of character, and this is not that kind of show.

i didn't say she'd be captain but they already cleared an opening for a numbered officer. with a war at their hands bupers (or whatever that is called in starfleet) won't make it there no1-priority to refill that spot. all capt. lorca needs to reinstate her as an ensign is a reason that holds up to bupers' scrutinity when the war is over.
 
Not really. We know that the High Council exists because we've seen them. Also, it seem like Kol has taken a leadership role

That may be plausible, but it would have been nice if they showed Kol in the larger scope of things. All I saw was 6 months later, Kol decided that a cloaking device was cool. Some back story would have helped. Maybe klingons not originally liking the "hiding warfare" kind of nature of a cloaking device hence not wanting it.

Well one ship can. Though it's a little dodgy

Two ships can, and one was destroyed. You know where this is going. Eventually they will rationalize not using spore travel anymore. I mean, unless they are tying spores into the TNG gel pacs in some way.

Look, can I just be completely honest with y'all and say I'm still stuck on the Klingons eating Georgiou.

Been four days and I'm still not over it and I'm not sure I ever will be tbh.

Yeah...that got me too. Ugh...I have an image of the klingon eating meat off the skull, even though there really isn't any meat there, but still :\.

I'd like to see more friendships or a relationships of some type soon. Conversation happens differently when friends talk vs. when strangers or colleagues talk and that's more revealing of character, and therefore develops character. The relationship doesn't even have to be friendly (think Quark and Odo in DS9) to help provide interest. I'm hoping this develops. Michael / Saru is interesting.... I think it developed much quicker on previous Treks and with a shorter season I hope they speed it up.

TOS friendship wasn't based on conversation, but was based on their actions in situations (aka worrying about a missing friend, fighting on their behalf, sacrifice). I'm fine if they choose to go that route.

I like Lorca's standoffish relationship with the crew. I know we're used to Trek "families," but that isn't how the workplace really is a lot of the time. You don't have to like the people you serve with, or agree with the decisions your superiors make. This friction, to me, seems more plausible than what we got with Voyager.

Now, whether people will want to watch that sort of dynamic in the long term ... that's another issue. But I'm liking it for now, and I don't really expect Jason Isaacs is on-board for the long haul, so the issue may take care of itself.

It takes getting used to, but I agree. I just hope he stays consistent with his demeanor. You really think they are going to kill him off?

I found the episode enjoyable for the most part. But the klingon need to speak english. I feel like I am watching a foreign film with subtitles. In am a slow reader and can't keep up.

Lol...what gets me is the delivery. Many they speak so damn slowly. I think they sped it up in episode 4, but the 1st 3 were excruciating.
 
I found the episode enjoyable for the most part. But the klingon need to speak english. I feel like I am watching a foreign film with subtitles. In am a slow reader and can't keep up.
A few things that yank me right out of the Klingon scenes; first, the ponderous delivery of their lines. The teeth appliances are definitely to blame, but so is the direction. That leads us to the next problem, the subtitles.

I'm a fast reader. However, the font they chose to use is cumbersome to read thanks to the only distinction between upper and lower case is the size. That's fine for a title, not for dialogue. The eye does not flow across the words as easily as it would with true mixed case, and you spend more time looking at the words than watching the actors' performances.

That's the other big problem. The actors are buried under prosthetics. The only emoting they can really do with any effectiveness is with their eyes and gestures. If I'm stuck slogging through aggravating subtitles, I'm not watching the actors. The makeup is injury enough to these actors. Impeding the audience's ability to appreciate what acting they can do is an insult.
 
A few things that yank me right out of the Klingon scenes; first, the ponderous delivery of their lines. The teeth appliances are definitely to blame, but so is the direction. That leads us to the next problem, the subtitles.

I'm a fast reader. However, the font they chose to use is cumbersome to read thanks to the only distinction between upper and lower case is the size. That's fine for a title, not for dialogue. The eye does not flow across the words as easily as it would with true mixed case, and you spend more time looking at the words than watching the actors' performances.

That's the other big problem. The actors are buried under prosthetics. The only emoting they can really do with any effectiveness is with their eyes and gestures. If I'm stuck slogging through aggravating subtitles, I'm not watching the actors. The makeup is injury enough to these actors. Impeding the audience's ability to appreciate what acting they can do is an insult.

I have also started getting fixated on their double nostrils, as clearly the actors nostrils are the lower pair.

I never thought of the solid prosthetics that way. Very similar to the jem'hadar. It was fine for them as they didn't really show emotions.
 
I know what you mean. I really want to see a Klingon sneeze now.
:lol: That reminds me of an outtake scene from "Vampires" (1998) where James Woods' character calls the head Vampire character (Jan Valek) a "Pole-Smoking Fashion Accident", to which the actor playing Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith) laughs so hard he shoots his fake teeth 20 feet out of his mouth.
 
Yes, I hate that! It really calls attention to the fact that it is a mask.
The thing that gets me about all this ponderous makeup is that both Glenn Hetrick and Neville Page are heavily involved in the makeup design and execution. For anyone who regularly watches the show "Face Off" where those two guys serve as judges along with Ve Neill (another top-shelf industry makeup artist), everyone knows they regularly crush people who do the same exact shit with their makeup designs on that show. The cumbersome mask-like quality, the muddy, monochrome paint jobs...all of it! How either of them let the Klingons get designed like this is...mystifying, to say the least.
 
That may be plausible, but it would have been nice if they showed Kol in the larger scope of things. All I saw was 6 months later, Kol decided that a cloaking device was cool. Some back story would have helped. Maybe klingons not originally liking the "hiding warfare" kind of nature of a cloaking device hence not wanting it.
Well, the fact that T'kuvma got boarded and shot to death on his own ship pretty much discredits him as a tactician, and the Klingons probably don't think much about his cloaking device either (they'd have some doubts as to how useful it really is). They certainly seem to be giving the Federation a hard enough time even without it. Kol, however, is looking for an advantage that will put him in a superior position even AFTER the war, so he decides to go on a salvage mission to the original battlefield and suddenly sees "Holy shit, those cult guys are still alive? That's hilarious!"

Two ships can, and one was destroyed. You know where this is going. Eventually they will rationalize not using spore travel anymore. I mean, unless they are tying spores into the TNG gel pacs in some way.
Doesn't take much rationalization. It's an incredibly dangerous and finicky piece of technology that only works by torturing large, amazingly dangerous animals whose exact origin is totally unclear.

They might as well be trying to weaponize the Ark of the Covenant.
 
Well, the fact that T'kuvma got boarded and shot to death on his own ship pretty much discredits him as a tactician, and the Klingons probably don't think much about his cloaking device either (they'd have some doubts as to how useful it really is). They certainly seem to be giving the Federation a hard enough time even without it. Kol, however, is looking for an advantage that will put him in a superior position even AFTER the war, so he decides to go on a salvage mission to the original battlefield and suddenly sees "Holy shit, those cult guys are still alive? That's hilarious!"

Really? Even when clearly T'Kumva's ship was the major heavy hitter in the battle? At least that's how they portrayed it from the Federation perspective.

Doesn't take much rationalization. It's an incredibly dangerous and finicky piece of technology that only works by torturing large, amazingly dangerous animals whose exact origin is totally unclear.

They might as well be trying to weaponize the Ark of the Covenant.

Ah, that's only if you want to do big jumps. You can do small jumps just fine. Then it's a matter of reducing cool down and stringing them together.

The big dangerous animal being a supercomputer is odd at best too. Might as well use Spock's brain.
 
It is sort of Sto-vo-kor-Freezes-Over level unlikely that the writers would not have decided upon a bailout plan for the Spore Drive long before they wrote the first episodes. They aren't rewriting Star Trek, that much is obvious - they are taking masochist pains to stay true to all the preceding silliness. So they are neither ignorant nor irreverent about the fact that mushrooms play a very small part in the future of FTL travel.

What the bailout plan is, remains to be seen. We're bound to get a story or two about the origins of the tardigrade, and it may well turn out it's impossible to declare them an inaccessible resource. But it's one possible route for the writers to go.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Really? Even when clearly T'Kumva's ship was the major heavy hitter in the battle?
I don't think it was. The ship seems to have just a single very powerful disruptor cannon that probably isn't even original to the design, and T'kuvma describes it as "ancient" and implies he salvaged it from a wreck. It certainly isn't a conventional military design; that it was able to participate in combat AT ALL is kind of amazing.

Ah, that's only if you want to do big jumps. You can do small jumps just fine. Then it's a matter of reducing cool down and stringing them together.
"Small jumps" in this case is defined as "a few thousand kilometers." In that scale, even impulse engines would probably be faster.
 
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