It was just okay this week. I liked there being an outer planet mission for the first time and Saru getting a chance to shine but there wasn't much substance to it, was there? They cut time away from it to go visit the Klingons for the first time in a couple of episodes, and it's not easy to do two different stories justice in about 40 minutes. The ending was good though.
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x08 - "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I see we're playing the "this happens all the time in Starfleet but I'm going to choose now to complain about it" game again. A bunch of weird glowing gas aliens literally moved into his head and put him in an altered state of mind. Yes, he says he was in control of his actions, but he experienced a sudden and unnatural emotional state, leaving him in no condition to rationally judge his own actions. It's on par with "This Side of Paradise" and plenty of other incidents.
Or perhaps he (Voq) read the quote in its original Klingon (this would after all predate TWOK)
I don't follow your reasoning here. Yes, we know it ended in 2270 (thanks to a later remark in Voyager, of all things, which was itself inconsistent with the OkudaChron), but unless you're assuming it ended on the very last day of that year and thus began on the very first day of 2266 — and with no delays to the clock along the way for refits, etc. — it stands to reason that it began some time in 2265, as Mighty Monkey notes, not '66. Exactly when is uncertain, and of course, as you say...
Indeed. And let's not forget TAS, either. Or the question of how long Kirk was in command before the FYM, and when exactly WMNHGB happened.
Here, I completely disagree. TOS-era stardates obviously bear no resemblance to TNG-era stardates, and trying to arrange TOS episodes by stardate order makes an utter mess of things. Plus, just on general principle, I try to avoid drawing conclusions about TOS continuity based on things established in later series (unless they're completely unequivocal, like the remark about 2270).
But we do, in fact, have other evidence. We know "Charlie X" (early S1) happened concurrently with Thanksgiving on Earth. We know "The Deadly Years" (mid S2) happened when Kirk was 34 — i.e., if we accept his canonical birthday, sometime between March 2267 and March 2268. We know "Day of the Dove" (late S3) actually happened three years after "Errand of Mercy" (late S1), not just two. And so on and so forth. We don't have references to specific years on the Earth calendar, but it's still possible to do a fair bit of logical interpolating.
FWIW, in my headcanon, S1 spans mid-late '65 to late '66, S2 spans late '66 thru '67, S3 spans the beginning of '68 thru early '69, and TAS takes us to the end of '69. (As much as possible, I also try to allow space for a lot of the novels in there, but of necessity canon comes first.)
All of which is a long digression by way of saying there's no particular reason (in or out of the OkudaChron) to place "Obsession" in 2268 rather than '67, which means the cloud-creature attack on the Farragut should be at some point in '56, already in the past vis-a-vis Discovery.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Yep.
Still lots of room for ambiguity there, though. We don't know how many years separate Jim and Gary (as little as a couple of years could account for the instructor relationship). We don't know whether the Republic assignment preceded or followed the Farragut; dialogue would seem to suggest the latter, but perhaps the Republic was only on a training mission, not a deep-space assignment. We do know that technically some academy trainees can and do get commissioned as officers even before graduating (Lt. Saavik, anyone?), and for that matter that some cadets do get assigned to deep-space missions before being commissioned (Cadet Tilly being the most obviously relevant example). So it can be frustratingly hard to nail down a sequence of events!...
Valid observations, and a semi-plausible hypothesis to explain them. I don't quite buy it, though; it wouldn't account for the way the Klingon Empire was consistently depicted as another interstellar "superpower," roughly equivalent to the Federation, and posing a potential existential threat to it that was only held off by a cold war or (later) a nonaggression treaty. The way you describe them, it would seem like the Klingons would be more analogous to the pirates of the Orion Syndicate... a continuing annoyance to the Federation, perhaps, but not a serious threat to it.
Seems plausible enough, although again it would be nice if the show made this clearer. IMHO what you're describing doesn't sound analogous to a feudal state, though, or for that matter to the Soviet Union, so much as to (e.g.) the early U.S. under the Articles of Confederation, or perhaps even to the contemporary EU, albeit less democratic than either.
Well, that would put it in the same league with pretty much every other kind of fundamentalism ever, so yeah.
De gustibus non est disputandum. :-) By my lights the Klingons are usually boring as dirt — especially as developed by RDM, with all the dynastic squabbles and the endless hypocritical braying about "honor." The Vulcans, OTOH, are fascinating to me (well, at least they were until Enterprise got its hands on them), precisely for that constant balancing act they maintain between logic and emotion.
I think this was my least favourite so far. Didn't realise it was going to be a part 1 until the end of the episode. Maybe if I'd known that going in I'd have different expectations. Hoping that the second part pays off Tilly/Stamet plot and L'Rell/Cromwell as those sections where the parts that really made me 'meh'.
That may very well be exactly @Timo's reasoning.
2268 will be a leap year...at least in our universe.
Ah, but are those Earth years or Klingon years?
And whether WNMHGB is part of the 5YM at all. It doesn't carry the monologue over the credits, after all.
(More to come in response, still. I got sidetracked with some other things today.)
No wonder, as there's none - it's of course 2265-66, not 2266 only. Sorree!
(Although I did read MMoMiM's comment as "Timo's Reasoning (TM)", which would be par for the course, I guess...
) But the thing is, nothing AFAWK defines the five-year mission except Kirk being in command. The mission doesn't start at any specific achievement or mark. And while the mission is ongoing, nothing defines it: the ship may be out in uncharted space, shuttling stuff in known space, visiting starbases, visiting Earth, whatever.
Kirk is very much in command in the second pilot already (even if his rank still remains that of Commander, as per sleeve braid). So there's no demarcation line between the second pilot and the series episodes.
Our only alternate hope would seem to be claiming that the five years are bookended by something happening to the ship - a long layover ending in the start, and a long layover following the end. We know there's a layover after the end, but not even "Q2" tells us that it would be immediately after the end. And we know nothing much of the beginning.
Also, when the parallel timeline of ST:ID introduces the five-year deep space mission as an all-new invention, it seems to be all about a set of people packing themselves aboard, sailing out, and returning five years later. ST:B reinforces that idea. But TOS didn't work like that: there was crew rotation galore.
But "trying to arrange" is very, very helpful if you bother to do it. TOS instantly becomes the five-year mission; Kang's remarks about the passage of time in "Day of the Dove" suddenly make sense; Chekov gets aboard before "Space Seed"; Kirk doesn't shuttle back and forth to SB11 within two weeks, with amnesia in between; etc. etc.
There's no real downside, either. The only case of overlap could be chalked out as a slip of the tongue by the fatigued Kirk, dictating a slightly too high stardate towards the end of his "Miri" ordeal by swapping the last two digits.
Certainly. And slotting the episodes to years 1-5 as per the first digit of their stardate works pretty well there.
The stardates hop forward a lot during the first season and a half. Allowing this to represent more passage of time than the second half of TOS is IMHO a very workable interpretation. Heck, one could slot the TAS episodes in there by their stardates, too (Chekov and Arex might simply take alternating leaves). Or put the TAS episodes beginning with 1 at the next "stardate decade", just like the DSC episodes appear to represent the previous "decade", with the decade digit omitted.
And since it's "eleven years" very specifically, there's little point in trying to say it's "actually just ten". McCoy wouldn't be counting the multiples of 365 days (or multiples of 1000 stardates) - he'd glance at Kirk's records, see that the Farragut one falls on a year that's the current year minus 11, and use that. Heck, he might even do the usual thing and fumble the calculation, in fact referring to something that happened 12 years earlier!
We know Gary was a Lieutenant Commander at the age of 23 already, as per his PSI records. We also have reason to think Jim was ahead of him in the game, in a position to request Gary for "his" first command. So Jim probably is older, although he could still be a star pupil instructor to his elders, or a super student who made full Commander at 22 and therefore could make requests about his older pal Gary.
The issue is basically only clouded by whether Kirk and Mitchell first met at that class, because we know they met 15 years prior to the ep. Perhaps those two are utterly separate events, with Mitchell joining Starfleet specifically because his (potentially much, much older) friend Kirk had already done so. Kirk comes from a Starfleet family, and was friends with Starfleet families like the Mallories. Perhaps he babysat Gary, ten years his junior?
If both are monolith things, then we do know, as Kirk was an Ensign on the former ship and a Lieutenant on the latter - we can't swap that order. But back-and-forth between ships is an option.
What reason do we have for thinking that Saavik had not already graduated?
I mean, it's clear that she had - that's why she's a Lieutenant. But it's also clear that not all officers take the command courses at the Academy (we have characters stating they did not), and not all officers undergo the no-win test, either. It may well be an optional extra, and sometimes cadets include it in their graduate studies, sometimes only in postgraduate ones.
But yes, maximally ambiguous, and frustrating.
Timo Saloniemi
And where does the second bridge turbolift take its leave?
What if Lt. Kirk got demoted for hesitating at the phaser station against the cloud creature and getting his captain and shipmates killed, but was then promoted again for preventing the incompetent Finney from doing the same?
(Limited to cheeky one liners because I'm feeling very sleepy and slightly silly.
)
That doesn't mesh well with the idea that the executive officer of the Farragut didn't think that Kirk was at fault but rather thought that Kirk "performed with uncommon bravery," as related by McCoy in "Obsession."
It seldom makes an appearance in TAS. We might just as well say it's there in most TOS episodes, which also fail to show all the nooks and crannies of the bridge more often than not...
(Limited to cheeky one liners because I'm feeling very sleepy and slightly silly.
I just fired up the espresso machine. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Timo Saloniemi
Curses! It always happens when I try to out-Timo @Timo!
This episode has a lot of the same problems most of the previous episodes had: A lack of focus. Too many subplots, but the major one was an almost by-the-numbers re-telling of already existing Trek stories. That being said, it seems like the writers get a better graps at their characters, which is good.
The plot
While all previous stories had some arc-elements to them, this is the first two(?)-parter since the pilot. The main plot - the strange planet and te klingons - are going to reappear next episode. Wise decision of the creators to give us the next episode as well. Would this have been the final episode before the break, I'd be rather unimpressed. Let's have a look at this episode's plots:
A-plot: Burnham, Tyler and Saru are on an away mission on planet Canadian forest to use a crystal structure for the war, and meet some energy beings. They make Saru go nuts, and he has to be overpowered/reasoned with. Then the energy-beings send signals to the Discovery and the klingons.
B-plot: Klingon chick interrogates Admiral chick, wants to defect, gets busted by Kol.
C-plot: Tilly learns about Stamets condition.
The characters
Saru was the main focus of this episode. There isn't too much of an character arc, with him going mad and all, but we learn that he lives in a constant state of fear, and also about some neat new powers - running fast and stuff. IMO all of that was handeled quite well.
Burnham and Tyler share their first non-timeloop kiss. We see Burnham struggle with that. We also learn about how she keeps being very precise and logical even in extreme situations, and being very by-the-books regarding protocol, which fits her character nicely. But also that she wants to solve problems peacefully if given the chance, trying to talk reason into Saru, and maybe even the klingons. Tyler OTOH hates the klingons, further evidence that he doesn't know about the Voq-thing.
Tilly was waaay toned down this episode, which worked great. If they keep the level of her social awkwardness like in this episode, she might become my new Barclay. Stamets sometimes feels like the old snarky one again, but the jumps make him act erratic, and out of character sometimes. I want to see more about him - but I am not looking forward to Mirror universe episodes - this serries already relies way too much on previous established Trek lore.
The L'Rell arc was the most tedious one. We don't know what she wants - is her attempt at defection genuine? Does she want to get to Discovery to reactivate Voq? Is she in cahoots with Kol? (Probably not) The point is: We don't know either motivations of her or anyone else, which makes the whole sub-plot boring. Having the actors speak under make-up so heavy they can't act, and false teeth in a made-up language so that they can't speak properly, is really, really annoying.
The presentation
The space-battle in the teaser looked very good! Sadly, it took precious screen-time away from the heavily under-developed main plot. But at least we see a bit more of the war going on. What was GREAT is that they change the entire vegetation of the planet to "blue". It makes it feel so much more alien. The vfx of the crystal structure and the aliens was servicable. All around, the visuals were very good. Where the episode struggled was pacing and focus, especially missing on the important stuff. Especially the main plot - Saru's gone mad - was in dire need of at least SOME changes to the formula, and not doing again such a clichéd by-the-numbers Trek staple story without any unexpected twists or addition to the trope.
Nitpicks
Gratitious Gore counter
Like every episode since the two-part pilot, this episode has some extremely unnecessary extreme gore going on. This time: Mutilated klingon corpes, with guts and intestines being in the middle of the frame. Stop that!
Final Verdict
Fine. Not bad. But nor really good either. Let's see if they have something in their sleeves for the second part, so far, this one was rather unimpressing. If the next episode is also going to be this predictable in all their sub-plots, I'm going to be disappointed.
The plot
While all previous stories had some arc-elements to them, this is the first two(?)-parter since the pilot. The main plot - the strange planet and te klingons - are going to reappear next episode. Wise decision of the creators to give us the next episode as well. Would this have been the final episode before the break, I'd be rather unimpressed. Let's have a look at this episode's plots:
A-plot: Burnham, Tyler and Saru are on an away mission on planet Canadian forest to use a crystal structure for the war, and meet some energy beings. They make Saru go nuts, and he has to be overpowered/reasoned with. Then the energy-beings send signals to the Discovery and the klingons.
B-plot: Klingon chick interrogates Admiral chick, wants to defect, gets busted by Kol.
C-plot: Tilly learns about Stamets condition.
The characters
Saru was the main focus of this episode. There isn't too much of an character arc, with him going mad and all, but we learn that he lives in a constant state of fear, and also about some neat new powers - running fast and stuff. IMO all of that was handeled quite well.
Burnham and Tyler share their first non-timeloop kiss. We see Burnham struggle with that. We also learn about how she keeps being very precise and logical even in extreme situations, and being very by-the-books regarding protocol, which fits her character nicely. But also that she wants to solve problems peacefully if given the chance, trying to talk reason into Saru, and maybe even the klingons. Tyler OTOH hates the klingons, further evidence that he doesn't know about the Voq-thing.
Tilly was waaay toned down this episode, which worked great. If they keep the level of her social awkwardness like in this episode, she might become my new Barclay. Stamets sometimes feels like the old snarky one again, but the jumps make him act erratic, and out of character sometimes. I want to see more about him - but I am not looking forward to Mirror universe episodes - this serries already relies way too much on previous established Trek lore.
The L'Rell arc was the most tedious one. We don't know what she wants - is her attempt at defection genuine? Does she want to get to Discovery to reactivate Voq? Is she in cahoots with Kol? (Probably not) The point is: We don't know either motivations of her or anyone else, which makes the whole sub-plot boring. Having the actors speak under make-up so heavy they can't act, and false teeth in a made-up language so that they can't speak properly, is really, really annoying.
The presentation
The space-battle in the teaser looked very good! Sadly, it took precious screen-time away from the heavily under-developed main plot. But at least we see a bit more of the war going on. What was GREAT is that they change the entire vegetation of the planet to "blue". It makes it feel so much more alien. The vfx of the crystal structure and the aliens was servicable. All around, the visuals were very good. Where the episode struggled was pacing and focus, especially missing on the important stuff. Especially the main plot - Saru's gone mad - was in dire need of at least SOME changes to the formula, and not doing again such a clichéd by-the-numbers Trek staple story without any unexpected twists or addition to the trope.
Nitpicks
- Soooo. Saru definitely staged a mutiny right here, right?!? Or do they have an "alien influence"-clause? Anyway, it kind of diminishes the severity of Burnham's "first" mutiny again, since this stuff happens regularly on Trek...
- Stamets calls Tilly "Captain". Alternate universe or time-travel influence...?
- The spaceship in the opening battle looked AMAZING! Does she fit in the TOS-aesthetic? No. Do I care? No. I like that ship.
- This entire two--parter is going to be an exact re-telling of TOS "Errand of Mercy", just without the reveal, isn't it?
- First rule of space opera: funky space crystal! Fits great with Trek. Not so great with the grim realism-tone they are aiming for
- I still really fucking hate the new klingon ship designs. They're stupid, and don't look half as good as a model from the 60s. Fire the guy who came up with them (and everyone who approved them as well), and let John Eaves design some real klingon ships
- The energy beings look so much like the spores! As did the space-anomaly that threatened Burnhams prison shuttle in ep3 "Context is for Kings". Apparently this is the only lightning vfx this guys have in their computers...
Gratitious Gore counter
Like every episode since the two-part pilot, this episode has some extremely unnecessary extreme gore going on. This time: Mutilated klingon corpes, with guts and intestines being in the middle of the frame. Stop that!
Final Verdict
Fine. Not bad. But nor really good either. Let's see if they have something in their sleeves for the second part, so far, this one was rather unimpressing. If the next episode is also going to be this predictable in all their sub-plots, I'm going to be disappointed.
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Saru is starting to get a little overpowered, IMHO.
He’s got his threat-ganglia, super sight, super hearing. Oh, he can also run super fast for a long period of time.
What sort of über-predator is his species hunted by on his homeworld? And why doesn’t Starfleet leave Saru on the crystalspire planet , and go recruit some of those guys instead?
He’s got his threat-ganglia, super sight, super hearing. Oh, he can also run super fast for a long period of time.
What sort of über-predator is his species hunted by on his homeworld? And why doesn’t Starfleet leave Saru on the crystalspire planet , and go recruit some of those guys instead?
Why would Saru be accused of mutiny? He was in command of the mission - Burnham and Tyler mutinied, conspiring against a superior officer and usurping his powers of deciding how the mission parameters are to be met. Supposedly, the mission was to see if the crystal could be used as a cloak detector; Saru determined that it could not, and the two mutineers tried to decide differently.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
I see what you're trying to do, but it fails hard because Saru put words into the mouth of Lorca when he said he had made contact and they were going to stay. He completely abandoned the mission. We have no idea whether the transmitter could be used as they wanted or not, the aliens had other ideas.
Saru lied about contacting Lorca. How does that make it mutiny? Kirk lied to his underlings all the time - it's his prerogative.
Let's say that Starfleet thinks "mutiny" means the same as it means today, only with the slight upgrade that a single person can now commit it. How is Saru opposing the authority of his superiors here? He's in charge, as far as we know he's the one who gets to decide whether to abandon the mission of pursuing "Starfleet's intent" as unviable or not. After all, even Burnham admits that there are strict and overruling Starfleet regulations against proceeding if certain parameters are met - and it's not even up to Saru to insist that they are being met here, since it's obvious to everybody involved anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
Let's say that Starfleet thinks "mutiny" means the same as it means today, only with the slight upgrade that a single person can now commit it. How is Saru opposing the authority of his superiors here? He's in charge, as far as we know he's the one who gets to decide whether to abandon the mission of pursuing "Starfleet's intent" as unviable or not. After all, even Burnham admits that there are strict and overruling Starfleet regulations against proceeding if certain parameters are met - and it's not even up to Saru to insist that they are being met here, since it's obvious to everybody involved anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
Gotta agree. This was my least favorite since "The Vulcan Hello." I knew the upward trend wouldn't last forever. Was just hoping we could get to a 10/10 before the midseason break. And we may still. Sunday's just two days away.
...It seems more and more likely that this is where the differences between broadcast TV and Netflix-type feed should have been properly exploited to do away with artificial "episode" borders: there's likely to be a good story here, but pacing it shouldn't be this rigid and difficult.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi