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

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I just had a thought about how Stella's portrayal in this episode seems at odds with her shrewish TOS appearance:

Remember, in TOS, we never saw the real Stella. All we saw was the android that Mudd built to resemble her. And while I don't doubt it resembled Stella physically, the android's personality must have been programmed by Harry himself - with all the biases that implies.

Meaning: The android is Harry's image of how Stella acts. Not how she really DID act. And Harry is hardly likely to be objective...
 
I just had a thought about how Stella's portrayal in this episode seems at odds with her shrewish TOS appearance:

Remember, in TOS, we never saw the real Stella. All we saw was the android that Mudd built to resemble her. And while I don't doubt it resembled Stella physically, the android's personality must have been programmed by Harry himself - with all the biases that implies.

Meaning: The android is Harry's image of how Stella acts. Not how she really DID act. And Harry is hardly likely to be objective...

My view of Stella is in this time period, she's a beautiful supportive twenty-something.

Stella in the future is how Mudd sees her after she realizes what an enormous piece of shit Harry is.
 
Stella in the future is how Mudd sees her after she realizes what an enormous piece of shit Harry is.

Exactly! I doubt Stella ever really acted that way. Harry was (by that time) so pissed off at her that he intentionally programmed the android to be the worst it could be. Not necessarily anything like the real Stella.
 
Entertaining and never dull, with a quick and lively pace, but to me the weakest of 1x03-1x07. I prefer Discovery's usual tone and ongoing story. I found the other episodes to be measurably more fun, despite being more serious. This felt like an episode for folks who prefer a more traditional Trek, which is fine...just not so much my thing.

Still, I had fun.

EDIT to add: as a major TNG fan, what this show is showing me is that I do NOT want more TNG, have very little interest or faith in the Berman-era storytelling format, and very much want a show that upsets the Trek status quo...which is to say that Discovery, generally speaking, is a good fit for me. Less so this episode.

Just kinda browsing to see if anyone had a similar issue with this episode as me. Tonally - this episode felt foreign to the series, to me... and that wasn't a good thing. On another site, I mentioned that I might have had a better reaction if we had had less of Stella and Daddy - they seemed to be played for comedy but I didn't find them funny and I would have thought it was more funny if, for the second time, and maybe as a running gag that got unfunny down the road - if the Discovery crew (and Capt. Lorca) keeps abandoning Mudd to his fate, and thus ends the episode. In an episode I was never going to like all that much, the added character of Stella and her dad just seemed tacked on and not all that justified.

QT
 
I really like this!! Good performances, moved along quite nicely. Well filmed, well made. Good character development for Burnham, good scifi stuff. Really just a great episode! :D
 
BeeGees in SPAAAAAAAAACE!
I gave this some thought after the episode. Why would the crew be playing ancient dance music at their party? This would be like playing music that was used to do "The Cakewalk" from the late 1800's. I suppose it could be one of those retro things where everything old is new again.

When I think f the way music has changed over the last years, it is hard to reconcile the choice of music.
 
Really enjoyed that, a nice change of pace. I think we needed the previous six episodes before we could have something like that, which was essentially a fun romp in the Trek tradition.

I suspect we'll return to the continuing story next week, but it gave some more focus to Tyler and Stamets, and made Burnham a lot more likeable. It feels like these people are becoming a crew, and they'll be tested in the coming episodes.

I thought it wasn't necessarily original, but it was confident and a lot of fun.
 
I gave this some thought after the episode. Why would the crew be playing ancient dance music at their party? This would be like playing music that was used to do "The Cakewalk" from the late 1800's. I suppose it could be one of those retro things where everything old is new again.

When I think f the way music has changed over the last years, it is hard to reconcile the choice of music.
Picard's crew all played ancient Bach and Beethoven at recitals, so why wouldn't they also enjoy the BeeGees?

Trek's always struggled to show future culture, with the exception of Vulcan Love Slave and The Adventures of Flotter. At least now they've moved from the 1870s to the 1970s.
 
Why did they cast such a young actress to play Stella? I hate it when they give old guys much younger love interests in movies and series. The actress is only 27 and Wilson is 51. It looked more like father and daughter kissing. Why should young, pretty and rich Stella be interested in Mudd who in addition to his character deficiencies does not even look particular good for his age. I never had a problem with suspending my disbelief when it comes to all the scifi and fantasy stuff, but seeing all the time on TV young good looking female characters be interested in much older men is annoying. Those kinds of couples are way overrepresented in the media.

Because girls in their twenties like bad boys. Also, Dwight looks younger than his age. Lastly, he has a beard.
 
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