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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x07 - "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"

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    335
Stamets is growing to be my favorite character on the show.

What a great actor so far.

By the by, have you heard Rapp's iteration of an event between him and Kevin Spacey when Rapp was 14?

if true, very sad.
Stamets was alive and compelling this episode.

Rapp's encounter with Spacey was chilling. I definitely hugged my son after reading it.
 
Have yet to watch this episode...but am curious....how does it fare against the well received and very recent Dark Matter loop episode? Trying to leave bias or potential apples and oranges aside that is. (Budget for instance.)
 
You're gonna have to get used to people saying things you don't wanna hear about something you like / love. I had to deal with it for ENT - this is your cross to bear.

I have to agree. While I too find those kinds of posts annoying, I try to either completely ignore them or point out all the stuff they got incorrect.

This was absolute shit. It ruined one of my favorite types of gimmick story (the groundhog day scenario), and it made Harry Mudd into a supreme being capable of shit no one could do in a story with an even slightly competent writer (like time loop tech and taking control of a federation starship all by himself). Unless they reveal that Harry Mudd is the half brother of Q this whole episode was bullshit. This was A Night in Sickbay or Threshold levels of bad, absolute crap tier Trek.
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Tech that doesn't exist outside of a Time Lord or that weird baby alien from TOS. No one has time loop or Starship computer hacking tech outside of the odd super race that Mudd sure as hell couldn't steal from. I'll be honestly, I didn't watch the show all that closely after Mudd was revealed to have hacked the computer. But unless he stole that tech from a group like the First Federation of the Borg, I'm calling BS.
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Who's to stay he didn't just find it lying around on a planet some where? At some point you have to allow the audience to make assumptions otherwise all you get are a bunch of explanations about pointless things that aren't relevant to the story.
As NOVE9 says, they don't cover the origin of Mudd's tech, but the number of times our heroes find advanced tech laying around on planets is innumerous (Iconian Gateways anyone?). The story addresses generally what it is (time travel/loop tech) and that he has it. He uses the looping to gain info and access at each step. Just because you don't "like" it doen't mean that it wasn't explained or is BS in any way.

It's even worse, Mudd knows all about the federation's #1 top secrete shroom drive, and how to reprogram/hack any Starfleet vessel. So we let him go free with that intel.
AT least we now have a time crystal energy device (tardis) inside of a space whale that's inside a cargo bay on discovery. I wonder how much of that tech we get to reap on board our Discovery science vessel.
I feel sorry for the Klingons, We have improbability drive, and a tardis. They or any other alien race are in trouble. I say two more episodes and the war is over.

I think they would just reprogram all of the Discovery's security codes. But I would have liked a line about Starfleet intelligence being asked to keep an eye on Mudd about the spore drive tech.

If Ash is Voq, this is about when he should have broken character, with the promise of a reset in 15 minutes, just to see how everything played out. Especially if the ship is about to be sold to a Klingon faction that he is not fond of.
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The "Tyler is Voq" theory has several huge holes in it that I have yet to see anyone even attempt to fill...
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That's my theory. That the Tyler programming is just on the surface and isn't actively aware when he does things nonchalantly to the benefit of House Mokai. It's possible that a Mokai ship was the one cloaked nearby in this episode, and they (and Mudd, who was their prisoner, btw) may have gotten the location or flight plan of Discovery from Tyler in the first place.

Personally I think Tyler doesn't know he is Voq. That it is all implanted or genetically altered with the Voq personally buried until a trigger (ala Manchurian Candidate).

This show sucks so bad. I can't believe that it has come down to Burnham and Tyler having to kiss each other as what makes her a lead character of worth. The love of a man. How old fashioned is that?

Others have addressed this, but giving the main character (who is exploring her humanity) a love interest in the 7th episode after all the preceding character building, does not make this worthless or old-fashioned.

I gave this one a 9. It felt like a Trek episode, and actually had good character moments in it. I like that they explained via dialogue and short recall clips the numerous loops, as opposed to TNG's "Cause and Effect", which felt tedious to me. Maybe I'm warped, but I liked the clips of Mudd killing Lorca, culminating in the one stranding him in space. Also, Mudd eating a sandwich in the Captain's chair had me laughing...

I think you have to remember the context for "Cause and Effect". Other than the aforementioned 12:01 (and probably the odd Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode) there were few well-known examples of this kind of time looping concept in 1992. Trivia says that in 1992 people were calling their local tv stations to tell them there was a problem with the feed, when they saw the episode apparently starting over. So given the novelty of the approach at that time and the evolution in experience and presentation that writers and tv have undergone since then, it is only to be expected that "Cause and Effect" seems a little slow by today's standards. Much like Stamets in this episode, we viewers expect the characters to be as genre-savvy as we are - we don't want to see whole minutes tick by just getting the other characters onboard a concept that should already be understood by them or at least known to them. But I appreciate what TNG did with that episode and the concept, and at least they tried to make changes in both presentation (camera angles, story focus, etc.) and events in each loop to keep parts from being too repetitive. In contrast, there is an X-Fiiles episode, "Unrequited", that has a flashforward at the start of the episode and when the show catches up to that point right before the climax, the entire sequence is replayed in its entirety, with no changes. [That was probably done to fill time on a episode that was running short that week.] But even though that episode only aired in 1997, by that time I, as a viewer, already had greater expectations for the presentation and I was annoyed that they didn't use the repetition to show a different angle, to highlight something else, or provide a different story or character perspective. This also ties into something a friend told me while watching "Magic to Make..." last night - he hadn't enjoyed watching "Citizen Kane" because it was slow and boring. But that is only because so much of what "Kane" introduced to movies has been repeated and iterated on since that the originator of so much good storytelling stuff now seems a little boring and dated.
 
@Ometiklan , I understand what you're saying and how "Cause and Effect" was done well for its time. For me, it just hasn't aged well and feels monotonous now.

As for Citizen Kane, I will tell you I have friends that love Pulp Fiction but can't really watch Kane, saying the latter is hard to follow. But they both use the same device of telling the story from near the end and then insert the backstory as the movie progresses!
 
I gave it an 8 out of 10 - the same as last weeks episode. If there were fractional ratings the episode would have been a little lower than last weeks, but obviously not by much. Lots to like if you like the series, and lots to draw you in if you're on the fence - however people that don't like it so far have their reasons and those reasons may or may not be overcome in the following episodes. We'll see how this shakes out. For me this show is finding it's legs, somewhat at least. My biggest problem was believing Tilly would be a party girl. Socially awkward Tilly, as depicted in the previous episodes, and party girl don't seem to mix well in my book.
 
@Ometiklan , I understand what you're saying and how "Cause and Effect" was done well for its time. For me, it just hasn't aged well and feels monotonous now.

As for Citizen Kane, I will tell you I have friends that love Pulp Fiction but can't really watch Kane, saying the latter is hard to follow. But they both use the same device of telling the story from near the end and then insert the backstory as the movie progresses!

Yeah, I get it. "Cause and Effect" can be a little slow, but since i saw it when it first aired I still remember the awesomeness of the first presentation, so I just have that feeling in my head anytime I rewatch it. My problem now isn't that I think it is boring or monotonous, because they do make those little changes that I mentioned to make each scene a little different, but because they don't have a Stamets to short circuit the loops, I find when I rewatch I get frustrated that I don't get to see more - the looping is too short. Even though I like the progression of a given repeated scene, how it is different in each loop because of minor remembrances/changes from before, each time through comes too fast for me and I want to see more. Especially in the loop where they are prepping a message to send, it always feels like they just got there and now the are all called to the bridge and they collide and it is time to send the message and boom. 'But I wanted more!'...I guess I can always just start the episode over and see it all again to get "more". :)
 
Fun time loop episode. Rainn Wilson makes a good Mudd so it was good to see him again, Tyler got some much needed development and Stamets is becoming a really interesting character. 8/10.
 
Yeah, girls like Tilly stand in the corner texting on their tricorders.

I think someone commented Tilly is the functioning autistic girl who is exuberant and effervesant rather than withdrawn. The kind who asks if you want to have sex after five minutes and shares inappropriate observations and details about her life as well as crewmates.

I'm more confused why Stella is meant to be a punishment. She seems a sweet and supportive girl.

I feel bad for her, not Mudd.
 
I think someone commented Tilly is the functioning autistic girl who is exuberant and effervesant rather than withdrawn. The kind who asks if you want to have sex after five minutes and shares inappropriate observations and details about her life as well as crewmates.

I'm more confused why Stella is meant to be a punishment. She seems a sweet and supportive girl.

I feel bad for her, not Mudd.

Yes, that didn't make any sense to me either, that's why I took it down from 8/10 to 7/10. The ending was just "alright, let's wrap this up somehow to leave this character with more stuff to do in the future as opposed to sending him to prison"
 
I tend to stand in the corner at parties, but when I have a few to drink I tend to be pretty friendly. Maybe people are mad Tilly isn't the nerdy girl in a fantasy that needs rescuing?

I think it's more the fact she's uncomfortable with switching beds in the pilot and now apparently just leaps into social situations.

But characterization marches on. There's even a trope for it.
 
What we're seeing is Mudd learning and improving during each loop. In first several loops, he's actually stopped. But, he learns the routines. We've observed him watching the crew do their thing. The idea is that there are many, many loops that we don't see. It might've been nice if they showed a little more, like how he got control of the computer. But, they showed enough to give the idea.

I get that we were seeing Mudd adapt and change his tactics after each loop. But showing us a bit more would have helped. I think showing us how Mudd got control of the computer would have helped a lot.
 
Such a weird helmet
helmet.jpg
 
Is the net effect character development for Burnham, changing DSC Harry into TOS Harry, and or making Stamits into a source for all extra prime universe information?
Stardate is inconsistent with early TOS.
 
I think someone commented Tilly is the functioning autistic girl who is exuberant and effervesant rather than withdrawn. The kind who asks if you want to have sex after five minutes and shares inappropriate observations and details about her life as well as crewmates.

I'm more confused why Stella is meant to be a punishment. She seems a sweet and supportive girl.

I feel bad for her, not Mudd.

I haven't gotten anything like "autistic" from anything associated with tilly in any way.
 
I haven't gotten anything like "autistic" from anything associated with tilly in any way.

She identified as having "special needs" that require her to avoid the rest of the crew and can't sleep in a bed that's not her own. That's not really so much as me misreading the situation as them stating it.

But I could be wrong.
 
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