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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x12 - "Vaulting Ambition"

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This show is definitely trying hard to be the 'Game Of Thrones' version of Star Trek. The influences are strong. Mixed in with a push on left wing politics. STD takes Trek to some dark, demented and twisted places. Between STD and Tarantino's Star Trek, this era will always be that time when Star Trek went through an identity crisis.

Voq/Tyler at war with himself seems to be the most perfect analogy for the series and it's direction.
 
Game of Thrones. The twist in the X Files premiere surprised me as well.

Only if you don't pay attention. The whole point of Ned Stark is "stupid decisions get you killed in this series". Just about every major character's death since then was telegraphed well in advance. ESPECIALLY the Red Wedding. The casuals masses just didn't pick up on it, apparently.

By the same token, the only reason why people predicted so many of Discovery's twists was because no big event in this show happened out of the blue either. They dropped hints since episode 3 and we just happened to catch all of them. Even Lorca's override of the last spore jump. That was a couple frames of text on a display.

Whedon...take(s) something in exactly the direction the audience doesn't expect.

Now here's an example of someone who throws things in from left field. However, "shocking" is not synonymous with "good". Killing off characters for little/no narrative reason doesn't make him a genius. Killing Wash (for example) after the ship already landed was cheap and pointless.
 
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I suppose it's possible that Mirror Stamets used his own research to open a rift between the two universes and sent Lorca through. Both men could have seen the redacted intelligence about the Defiant and thought that it was their best chance of finding a way to overthrow Georgiou. That would probably mean that Mirror Stamets sympathizes with any rebel movement against the Emperor but has yet to be discovered as a sympathizer or collaborator, having been in his own comatose state aboard the palace ship.
 
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Something I saw mentioned in the episode that I'm not quite sure works or not, is the fact that the Terrans are photosensitive. Isn't the ISS Enterprise fairly bright?
Overall though, I thought it was an ok episode. Curious to see what's going to happen with these threads they currently have going.
 
So much exposition in this episode. More than usual for a show that tends to be too heavy in it, already (for my tastes, anyway). It just plodded along, moving from one pair of persons talking to each other to another pair, then to another.

The story may be interesting on the whole, but the storytelling has a long way to go, in my opinion. When was the last time there was any real action? When was there any scene with substantive interaction and engagement among multiple characters? The writers seem to always have characters paired off in conversational dyads and those conversations really seem to be the mechanism that advances the plot.
 
Does anyone complaining about this show being predictable have any certain predictions for how this season will end?
I'm not complaining. However I have already predicted prior to the break that we will end up at the end of the STD series in the prime universe. (The one with hairy Klingons) and no knowledge of improbability spore drive)
 
I rated this episode a nine on the basis of it being very well executed viewed in isolation. It was probably the episode I enjoyed the most to date, because all of the "mystery" is finally starting to make some sense.

That said, a lot of aspects of the episode were very frustrating.

I didn't pick up on it as early as Voq, but I had resigned myself after the last episode to Mirror Lorca, so the reveal didn't come as a big shock. That said, I hoped I was wrong for two reasons. One, it shows the writers really aren't anywhere near as subtle as they think they are. Two, and much more importantly, it destroys Lorca's character development, and shows as instead of being a shady and traumatized captain he's just from the place all the Terrans are EVIL!!!

I really, really don't like where things are going with Voq right now. This past week someone suggested if they wanted Shazad Latif to stay on the show, they'd find some way to "fix" Voq/Ash, and it seems like they didn't even wait an episode to do so. I hope what was done by L'Rell was more merging the two personalities, and not purging Voq out of Ash's mind. But I'm not optimistic. This would basically be the complete abortion of another character arc.
 
Oh, and what was Culber really? I'm hoping he wasn't supposed to be the "soul" of the real Culber, because that's far too woo for Trek. Was he some sort of alien entity appearing as Culber? An aspect of Stamet's subconscious?
 
Is it possible that Voq's memory engrams are now gone for good and all that's left is Ash Tyler's body? The Klingon death howl could have been L'Rell mourning the loss of her lover's identity and thus all that remained of him.
 
I didn't pick up on it as early as Voq, but I had resigned myself after the last episode to Mirror Lorca, so the reveal didn't come as a big shock. That said, I hoped I was wrong for two reasons. One, it shows the writers really aren't anywhere near as subtle as they think they are. Two, and much more importantly, it destroys Lorca's character development, and shows as instead of being a shady and traumatized captain he's just from the place all the Terrans are EVIL!!!
All that is going to depend on his motivations. If he's just straight up Bad Bad Leroy Terran, which is honestly where it appears this is going, which makes me assume that's where it's not :p, then yeah. But if he's a rebel against the Empire, that could make it interesting.
 
Only if you don't pay attention. The whole point of Ned Stark is "stupid decisions get you killed in this series". Just about every major character's death since then was telegraphed well in advance. ESPECIALLY the Red Wedding. The casuals masses just didn't pick up on it, apparently.

Ned's failure was telegraphed, sure, but I think someone paying attention could still be legitimately be surprised by Joffrey's self-defeating egomania in ordering Ned's execution. Crazy is one thing, stupid another.

As for the ep, I liked it fine, but I'm getting worried about the hellacious rate they're burning through plot points
 
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