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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x09 - "Into the Forest I Go"

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    330
hooooollllyyyy shit, this episode was INCREDIBLE!!!
They weren't bragging when they said 'Balance Of Terror'-good, in fact, I think they were being modest..!
This was incredibly good television, and the 8 episodes leading up have been made even better by it! Cannot wait until January and where they will take us.
Never could have imagined DSC would be THIS f*ng good!
 
Gave this one a 9. I don't think there is an actual award awaiting Lorca, and he knows it. I think this episode also should put an end to any doubt about Tyler/Voq.

Yeah, I got the distinct impression that the award was, at the very least, a pretext to get him back to the starbase so they could reassign him.

Also, Starbase 46? Looks like the writers didn't get the 47 memo. I always thought all the 47s were kinda dumb and stood out like a sore thumb, but now that they used another number, all I could think about was 47. Bleh.

And hey, Discovery can initiate a spore jump while at warp. There's been nothing to suggest that this would be an issue, but it seemed noteworthy, for some reason.

Does anyone have any screenshots of the torture flashbacks? It all went by very quickly. I bet there's a lot to unpack there.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this episode. I gave it a 9. I've really liked them all, really. I'm not sure what 10 looks like.
 
The producers have stated that it's the Prime timeline and they've put a lot of Easter eggs in to that effect. So, I don't think what you're suggesting is true. Granted, that could be a surprise they have in store for us, but I don't think so.
Are the Easter eggs really any more than what we get in comic book franchises, referencing stuff from their source material? Like Smallville mentioning Gotham city, or the Justice League movie namedropping the Green Lanterns. It doesn't mean Ryan Reynolds is gonna show up in his green animated suit, just that a version of them exist in that world.

Just like DSC's version of, say, Captain April.
 
Yeah, I got the distinct impression that the award was, at the very least, a pretext to get him back to the starbase so they could reassign him.

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Yeah, I got the distinct impression that the award was, at the very least, a pretext to get him back to the starbase so they could reassign him.

Maybe that is the real reason Lorca convinced Stamets to make that last jump and then overrode the navigation to send the ship to an alternate universe? Lorca did it to escape reassignment and possibly punishment. It's the perfect escape because Starfleet can't get him if he is in an unknown parallel universe.
 
I gave it a 10! The show has really been up and down for me this season--for me, it got off to a rocky start, but I got into some of the more recent episodes. I really feel like this episode hit it out of the park. Burnham has been growing on me all season (love the actress--still not totally sure about the choice to go with her being raised by Vulcans but I'm coming around. I really did love her being a badass and challenging Kol to a fight here.

It’s looking more and more like the Ash is Voq theories are true. But it’s obvious Ash has no idea—he was genuinely traumatized, and from his POV what happened between him and L’Rell was clearly rape. I think they should have used the actual word rape if they were going to show flashbacks of him getting raped. Semantics, perhaps, but I do wonder if it's because it's Star Trek or because the victim is male that they didn't actually come out and use the word. L'Rell's comments at the end of the episode definitely make it seem like those Voq theories are on the nose. I’m really into Ash's relationship with Burnham so it’s going to be really heartbreaking if/when that reveal happens.

I'm wondering also if Stamets’ eyes going white is a callback to the TOS episode Where No Man Has Gone Before. That's probably been said already, lol--I need to go back and read the first 19 pages of this thread.

It's going to be a long wait to January!
 
The thing about fighting Klingons: humans and other humanoids have been shown to be able to fight them in close quarters so many times its pretty clear Starfleet CQC training is up to the task (double-ax punch, works every time). They may look more threatening than they are. In any case Burnham was well trained Suus Manha or however its spelled. She didn't need to win the fight so much as she needed to draw the fight out long enough to let the relays finish their task. Essentially she was rope-a-doping her opponent.
 
Maybe that is the real reason Lorca convinced Stamets to make that last jump and then overrode the navigation to send the ship to an alternate universe? Lorca did it to escape reassignment and possibly punishment. It's the perfect escape because Starfleet can't get him if he is in an unknown parallel universe.

Yeah, I'm leaning in the same direction, here. Lorca's really hard to pin down, though. He seemingly risked his whole career to stick around to protect the Pahvans and crack the secret of the cloaking tech. That seems to be at odd with his apparent decision override the jump coordinates to purposefully get them all lost when Discovery hadn't yet had a chance to finish analyzing and transmitting the cloak data (didn't Lorca tell the admiral that it would take 11 hours?).
 
Yeah, I'm leaning in the same direction, here. Lorca's really hard to pin down, though. He seemingly risked his whole career to stick around to protect the Pahvans and crack the secret of the cloaking tech. That seems to be at odd with his apparent decision override the jump coordinates to purposefully get them all lost when Discovery hadn't yet had a chance to finish analyzing and transmitting the cloak data (didn't Lorca tell the admiral that it would take 11 hours?).
It may make sense if Lorca has a messiah complex about himself, thinking he's the only one capable of saving the Federation with the aid of his ship. And one some level he may be right, which isn't going to help matters. The best con artist is someone that believes their own hype.

I don't think he was over-selling or lying when he gave his "that's just the beginning" sales pitch to Burnham and Stamets. He believes that. Abandoning the Pahvans was not a very Starfleet thing to do so, Lorca returned and did the right thing. Starfleet politically probably can't punish the guy for what was at best an act of insubordination due to his success, but they can give him an honorary title and put him out to pasture now that they think they have the upper hand in the war. It's easy to like Ceasar until he breaks camp and starts heading back for the Rubicon.

Lorca also didn't expect to rescue Admiral Cornwell and send her home where she can tell her fellow Admirals that he needs to be reigned in for treatment. It was clear he didn't expect to lose Stamets either. It would not surprise me if Lorca took the ship "somewhere" for safekeeping while he figures out what to do next.

Love this show. Lorca is one of the most compelling characters we've had in Trek.
 
Yeah, I'm leaning in the same direction, here. Lorca's really hard to pin down, though. He seemingly risked his whole career to stick around to protect the Pahvans and crack the secret of the cloaking tech. That seems to be at odd with his apparent decision override the jump coordinates to purposefully get them all lost when Discovery hadn't yet had a chance to finish analyzing and transmitting the cloak data (didn't Lorca tell the admiral that it would take 11 hours?).

I suspect everything he's doing is in service to his own personal agenda. If it advances his goals to save the Pahvans, he'll do that. But I'm guessing it's more about getting to wherever he's trying to go than altruism or even winning the war.

I hope I'm wrong, because I want him to stay in the captain's chair.
 
Felt kind of let down by this episode. It's not bad in any way, shape or form, and this is still certainly the best a Trek show has been out of the gate, but everything just feels so predictable and by-the-numbers. I don't know, maybe I've been following the spoilers and behind-the-scenes stuff too closely, because almost nothing in this episode surprised me. And while I really do like individual parts about the episode (like the kiss between Stamets and Culber — finally!), most of it just feels so unimaginative to me. Will rewatch it with my wife later and see what I think then.

I'm glad she survived too, though this reveal was a little anticlimactic after the whole is-she-dead-or-isn't-she thing after last week's episode. In this ep, the rescue team shows up in the meat locker and, oh look, Cornwell is alive. I also would be interested to know if she and L'Rell spoke at all while imprisoned together, formulating plans and such, or if her waking up when Burnham arrived was her first return to consciousness since we saw her last.
Yeah, the whole thing with L'rell and Cornwell was anticlimactic. How did L'rell suddenly end up in that room? Don't they have a brig on board? Did she just sleep?

Ultimately I like Discovery, the things that work for me really work for me. I am excited for each new episode and watch right away. But I am also frustrated with it, in that it feels perpetually on the cusp of being waaaaaay better, if they could just do a better job of camouflaging their plot mechanics as drama. You always feel the hand of the writer moving the chess pieces around.
That's putting my problems with the development of the show way more eloquently than I ever could. Something's just off about the way things are plotted and presented.
 
Are the Easter eggs really any more than what we get in comic book franchises, referencing stuff from their source material? Like Smallville mentioning Gotham city, or the Justice League movie namedropping the Green Lanterns. It doesn't mean Ryan Reynolds is gonna show up in his green animated suit, just that a version of them exist in that world.

Just like DSC's version of, say, Captain April.
Never read the comics so I don't know. But, taken by themselves, the Easter eggs might not mean too much. However, taken in conjunction with the Producers' comments about the show taking place in the Prime timeline, I think we can be fairly sure that is their intention.
 
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