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

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He's got a good side deal with some crystalline lifeforms. He gets them whatever they need and they give him the odd fragment from time to time. They don't care what he does with them.
 
Ricky Spanish said:
I'm not sure leaving Mudd with Stella is much of a punishment. He didn't seem to have much trouble getting away from her before, and again at a later date.
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Prime Mudd is an inept colorful scoundrel.
Disco Mudd is a mass murdering psychopath.

Coloratura said:
He left him on a planetoid instead of transporting him to a Federation facility with a capable legal system. A planetoid with the very androids he used to hijack the Enterprise. Again, someone like Mudd tends to wriggle out of bad situations. Leaving him to his own devices on a planetoid is essentially letting him go.
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“Essentially” isn’t the same as “actually”.

And if we’re nitpicking technicalities then what Kirk did can be excused because it was in a time of peace. What Lorca and crew did was treasonous because it was done in a time of war.
 
gblews said:
Yes, I know why the producers chose to use 20th and 21st century music. The reasons are obvious. My original question, however, why is a group of 23rd century young people playing centuries old dance music at a party, was a request for an "in-universe" explanation.

I was watching an episode of Firefly not too long ago and here's what DSC could have done; simply play some of Mozart's (or any of the old master's) classical dance music and have the partiers doing some 18th century baroque style dance. The party could have been just as raucous and the music and dance presented as a fad of the day. Tyler, or someome, asks something like, "never got into this fad".
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Do they have to state it outright? We see they're into 70's dancing/music and we know soon they'll be obsessed with 60's fashion and music. It's all good. :)

By the time of Voyager, they'll be watching black-and-white serials.
 
Longinus said:
Yeah, I'm really tired of this 'but that other show did that too' excuse. There is a good chance that if I criticised it here, I didn't like it when it happened in that other show either, but we're not discussing that here.
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The frustration comes about because there is the impression that the same critics are simultaneously complaining the show is too different from old Trek, but then complain about elements of the show which are like old Trek. In all honesty, it's probably different critics on each wing, but it does make you feel like the show can't win. It's either too much like old Trek, or not enough like it. It's so different that it's declared not to be Trek, while simultaneously decried as a rehash of the Berman era.
 
cultcross said:
The frustration comes about because there is the impression that the same critics are simultaneously complaining the show is too different from old Trek, but then complain about elements of the show which are like old Trek. In all honesty, it's probably different critics on each wing, but it does make you feel like the show can't win. It's either too much like old Trek, or not enough like it. It's so different that it's declared not to be Trek, while simultaneously decried as a rehash of the Berman era.
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It is a difficult line to walk.

I probably wouldn't be as down on Discovery if they weren't trying to cram it into the TOS timeframe/universe. It just magnifies what doesn't work.
 
cultcross said:
The frustration comes about because there is the impression that the same critics are simultaneously complaining the show is too different from old Trek, but then complain about elements of the show which are like old Trek. In all honesty, it's probably different critics on each wing, but it does make you feel like the show can't win. It's either too much like old Trek, or not enough like it. It's so different that it's declared not to be Trek, while simultaneously decried as a rehash of the Berman era.
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Well it is not weird to wish the new show to have more of those elements you liked about the old shows and less those elements you didn't like about them. It has gotten to the point where you cannot critique obvious plot holes because there has been plot holes in the past Trek shows and films!
 
I can understand how that might become tiresome. But it's because those criticisms are quite often (though not always) couched in a "and that's why it's not true Trek" way. Which, as you can imagine, can be equally tiresome to those enjoying the show for what it is, who recognize that such flaws are part and parcel of where Trek has gone before.
 
Longinus said:
Well it is not weird to wish the new show to have more of those elements you liked about the old shows and less those elements you didn't like about them. It has gotten to the point where you cannot critique obvious plot holes because there has been plot holes in the past Trek shows and films!
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That's quite reasonable a position, but it can come across as holding Discovery to a standard that has not been applied elsewhere - the example of the Genesis device is from one of the most universally praised Trek productions, and yet has the same problem as the time crystals, it's a Superweapon that mysteriously disappeared. In fact, conveniently forgotten abilities have been a general sci-fi trope for a long time. Often it's not even consistent within a single story. The Potterverse has a potion to make you tell the truth that's readily available in a school, but numerous plotlines rely on people lying in public courts. Dare I even mention the eagles from Lord of the Rings?

Sometimes you've just got to accept some handwavey phlebotinum in sci-fi to make the story work. If it was all watertight, there'd be no fantasy element at all. The story was about time loops, how they happened is as meaningless as how the Typhon expanse worked in Cause and Effect. The Genesis device needed narrative properties that made it a dangerous weapon while being a well intentioned science project, and the 'everything old is new again' implications of the tech worked well with the themes. The geopolitical and technological effect of introducing that specific ability into a 'real' Trek universe is unimportant to the story being told.
 
cultcross said:
That's quite reasonable a position, but it can come across as holding Discovery to a standard that has not been applied elsewhere - the example of the Genesis device is from one of the most universally praised Trek productions, and yet has the same problem as the time crystals, is a Superweapon that mysteriously disappeared. In fact, conveniently forgotten abilities have been a general sci-fi trope for a long time. Often it's not even consistent within a single story. The Potterverse has a potion to make you tell the truth, but numerous plotlines rely on people lying in public courts.

Sometimes you've just got to accept some handwavey phlebotinum in sci-fi to make the story work. If it was all watertight, there'd be no fantasy element at all. The story was about time loops, how they happened is as meaningless as how the Typhon expanse worked in Cause and Effect.
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I disagree. We’ve seen the Genesis devise pay off in a sequel. We (well, most of us) don’t complain about the spore drive because we believe that the technology’s disappearance will be resolved by the end of the series. But the time crystals are forgotten in the same episode they appeared. And that’s not in a stand-alone series like previous Treks but in a supposedly serialized show.
 
Captain of the USS Averof said:
Yep.
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Eh. My point is that it's subjective, and that there is precedence for criminals like Mudd to just be left to their own devices rather than brought in for their serious crimes. You don't have to like it, but DSC is just following one more classic Trek tradition.

cultcross said:
Knock that off.
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I'm fairly certain one of us has a time crystal.
 
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