• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

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

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    269
Disagree strongly, I thought she was great. In the After Trek show Jonathan Frakes said she was spectacular.
That means nothing. He would say that about any member of the cast.

She's terrible on Discovery. I don't know if it's her fault or if it's the writing/directing, but she's embarrassing herself.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bgt
I have enjoyed Discovery so far, for the most part, because it is entertaining drama. But the MU plot is getting to be a bit much. There is only so much cold blooded killing, backstabbing, eating kelpians etc I can take in my Star Trek.

Discovery needs to remember Star Trek's original mission statement:
"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before".

I bolded the important part. Doing exciting drama and slapping "star Trek" in front, is not enough. Star Trek is not just about exciting or entertaining scifi but about exploring scifi ideas through the medium of strange worlds and strange aliens. Discovery would do well to remember this.
Looks like you stick to much in the past and what you comfortable with. SD is changed much for the better and i'am 58 went thru all star trek episodes this is one of the best (in my opinion). Can't wait till Section31 screw up a lot of things and make things more worse or interseting.
 
Regarding Roman empire in MU, I thought it was established that MU history diverged when mirror Zefram Cochrane shot the Vulcan first contact dude.
 
And if it were DS9 they'd have another 3-4 standalone episodes over the next five seasons dealing with the aftermath.

Saying this clears the bar Voyager set is very, very faint praise. And I 100% agree that Discovery is better than Voyager.

Sure, like the time O'Brien died and was replaced by his own future version. That came up dozens of times. Or was brainwashed into thinking he'd spent 20 years in prison and got so traumatised he wanted to kill himself. That definitely got mentioned again. Oh, no, wait.
 
Star Trek has magic floorboards that can produce gravity without also making people one floor down fly up to the ceiling below when they jump. It also tends to nullify inertia most of the time, and when it fails, it only fails one one or two axis points.
They've been showing repulsor tech for so long, I can handle her magic throwing star. It actually kind of makes sense. Why don't Klingons have those?
I didn't criticize it for having magic in it, I criticized it for having too much magic in it. There has to be some limitation and consistency within the fantasy world you're creating. Discovery has no sense of grounding.

Her performance was very camp but I think that's what they were looking for. She delivered it. I like the costuming.
She was stiff as hell (that's not normally associated with camp). Even so there's a difference between intentional camp and unintentional.
 
He knows Trek, he can write, he understands how to build flawed, compelling characters, and he is a successful showrunner. What more could you ask for?
I could ask for a Star Trek fanbase that APPRECIATES flawed, compelling characters rather than casting about looking for reasons to be hyper critical all the time.

well.gif

But that's just me.
 
I guess if the writers and actor is willing our Lorca could've escaped the Buran and be elsewhere.

Well, since you said that I like Tilly more :)

Both the Discovery and "Mirror, Mirror" switches involved both universes crossing over, so I would say there is a good chance PU Lorca is, or at least was, in the Mirror U.

I did not see it coming that the two Stamets body swapped. Surprised more people aren't talking about that one.

Yeah, I too thought this at first, but both Stamets seemed very comfortable in their locations, so I don't think they actually switched. And if the other posters are correct in that they heard MU Stamets say "he did it", then that confirms it.

Because the most likely scenario is that the two Burans were switched as they both were being attacked/destroyed. Prime Lorca most likely went down with his ship in the MU vs MU Lorca bailing at the last minute in the PU.

It's in the MU rebel datacore that the Emperor destroyed the Buran in retaliation for Lorca killing Burnham.

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I'd be thrilled if Prime Lorca did survive and we manage to get him back before they jump back to PU somehow, but I doubt it will happen.

I think the Buran switch could have been initiated by the same phenomenon that caused the Enterprise-C to jump forward in "Yesterday's Enterprise": massive torpedo explosions in both universes both caused by Klingon weapons (MU: rebels; PU: war with Klingons).

I would caution against taking the rebel datacore at face value. They might not have it right at all. But I say "would caution" because so far the experience of Discovery is that records/data/rumor of stuff that happens offscreen has been pretty reliable so far. These writers don't seem to go much for unreliable narrators - outside of Lorca and Tyler's faked memories - expositional stuff it played pretty straight.

Even if prime Lorca is still about somewhere, that won't be the same character, and that's a shame.
I am annoyed they went the Mirror Lorca route, I was hoping Trek would give us a character who was flawed, ambiguous and a bit of an anti hero without needing a supernatural 'explanation' for it...

So the spore drive doesn't exist in the MU, and it appears Mirror!Stamets messing about with the tech may have created a disease or similar which is wiping out the network - sowing the seeds of writing out the drive from the show, I assume. It raises the question of whether that was, speaking fatalistically, inevitable - if the network spans all parallel universes, in one there was bound to be a Stamets who made that mistake.

One question that remains though is that we seem to have parallel stories going on between Lorca and Stamets. Mirror!Lorca wanted to go back to the MU, Mirror!Stamets was trying to contact Stamets from the other side; which was responsible for Discovery ending up here? Both? Did Mirror!Lorca know of the technology on his side so sought it out on our side and dragged it out of a lab and into service?

Point 1: I too would like them to keep a morally grey character, especially one as good as Lorca, and it may still happen somehow.

Point 2: I think the ISS Discovery does have the spore drive. It switched places with the USS Discovery afterall. Plus Stamets is on the flagship working on Spore tech; Straal is probably on the ISS Discovery working on the spore drive.

Anyways, this Star trek is too à la LOST for me.

I'm thinking about MU Lorca:

First he said he can't stand bright light because of the buran accident. When he is tortured by L'rell, she said his eyes are damaged. We saw he cured his eyes to see the klingon ship destruction.

And now they say his eyes were never damaged, they are just made so?

L'Rell could have been saying his eyes were damaged because 1) that is what is in Lorca's official file (since he has been using that as an excuse to cover his biological difference), and 2) she could have based it off of his reaction to lights in the room. There is nothing that says she actually did an intensive medical scan to verify his damaged eyes.

My theory is Mirror Lorca is the one who either destroyed the Buran blaiming the Klingons, or led the Klingons to destroy it. Or hell Mirror Lorca heard of the destruction of the Buran while hiding out somewhere and saw it as an opportunity to do something.

Either way, Prime Lorca is dead.

Admiral Cornwell said Lorca has been different ever since the destruction of the Buran. I think Prime Lorca died with the Buran and Mirror Lorca took his place, saying he survived.

I think the ISS Buran and USS Buran switched places; if MU Lorca survived its destruction by the Klingons in the Prime universe, there is every reason to believe that PU Lorca survived destruction by Klingon rebels in the MU. Maybe he joined the rebels?

I also wonder if Bryan Fuller had stayed on if this would have been the direction. As I posted a few pages ago, as of episode 10 there is quite a bit of difference in writers and producers credited. I wonder if episodes 3 - 7 were already written before Fuller left and were re-written (sometimes uncredited) after Fuller departed and Berg/Harberts took over as showrunners (and Akiva Goldsman came in as an Executive Producer). That would explain the changeover in staff as I'm sure Berg/Harberts wanted to hire some writers of their own. It's also possible that Akiva Goldsman came in and changed the focus of the season to the mirror universe. He's also directing the season finale. This is all pure speculation of course.

Yeah, it will be interesting down the road to find out what stuff changed behind the scenes. I am surprised there has been so much writer changeover - despite tons of changeover on TOS, TNG, and probably the other serieses, if I were a writer, I don't think you could pry me away from a Star Trek gig.

Also, one of the writers/producers mentioned on After Trek that they had originally intended on introducing the Mirror Universe early on, somewhere around episodes 3 or 4. I wonder how that would have worked out and what that would have meant for the Klingon War storyline (would Discovery have been sidelined for the whole war instead of just the last 1/4?) and Lorca (would he have been revealed to the audience as from the MU, but not known to the other characters as such? Did Isaacs have a hand in that change as he mentioned having negotiated a lot of input into his character when he signed on?).

I actively hated this episode, in a way I haven't with any of the previous installments...After that neck-snapping a few weeks back, I saw all those interviews that Culber would be back, those quotes from the showrunner about how he's openly gay and they are NOT doing the "kill your gays" trope, and the audience should just be patient...what a complete and disgusting betrayal of everything they claimed they wanted to accomplish with this couple...I've tried to defend these writers and view their decisions in the most favorable light, but if this is it for Culber, they really are hacks who have no idea what they're doing.

I must say that since this is a serialized show, "trusting the writers" doesn't mean you have to wait 1-2 episodes to see the full truth of the matter. You have to give them at least till the end of the first season to get the story to where there is some finality to it. That is just how it is. That said, even the end of season 1 won't be the end of everything because the writers have already said there will be fallout explored in season 2. But I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the end of season 1 will at least come to a stable point in the Stamets/Culber/death/couple storyline (i.e., at that point they probably will be done with whether or not Culber is dead or can come back, etc.).

They've done absolutely no worldbuilding with Discovery so it's hard to guess what they have planned.
My hope is legitimately Reset at the end of this Season through time warp mycelium network nonsense, then the writers watch A LOT of DS9 and S3/4 of ENT and learn how to do serialised Trek properly and then have S2 be what S1 should have been, actually developing a good cast of characters and building the world up so stakes actually matter...

Klingon War should have never taken place till at least S2. First season should have been establishing characters and the world with tensions ratcheting up with the Klingons only for then war to break out in S2 and we can explore the conflict from a cast of characters we know from both sides.

I think what constitutes world building can vary from person to person, so I disagree with you some that there hasn't been any. I think they have been more focused on character building for this season, and I like all of the (non-Klingon) characters.

As for what "should" have been in season 1 or season 2: I would like all Trek fans to try to keep in mind that these "shoulds", and others we all see posted everywhere, are just the individual fan preferences about the show. I think a lot of fandom in general (Star Wars, Marvel, etc. as well as Trek) is currently experiencing a big problem with fans "hating" new editions of their respective canons because it simply isn't what the individual fan had concocted in their own head beforehand. It all goes along with claims of "this isn't Star Trek" - fans get their own conceptions/head canon of what Star Trek is, and when what they are presented doesn't fit that preconception then suddenly everything is terrible, not-Trek, or a violation of everything Trek stands for. I don't mean to say that you, Donker, are guilty of this, I just mean to warn everyone: take the show as presented - is it good or bad on its own merits - don't just compare it to what you would prefer had happened.

Sure, it can be criticized that it hasn't done a lot of world building, but was that the goal of the show? Sure, the show hasn't shown the characters exhibiting the best qualities of the Federation all the time, but wasn't the writers' goal the exact opposite - showing the Federation moving toward demonstrating those ideals? Sorta like how Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans didn't really display Vulcan-ness as it is largely known in later centuries - the Enterprise Vulcan Arc in season 4 addressed those issues explicitly.
 
Regarding Roman empire in MU, I thought it was established that MU history diverged when mirror Zefram Cochrane shot the Vulcan first contact dude.

Enterprise did show the First Contact scene from the mirror universe perspective but I don't think they said that that is when it diverged.
 
Who fired on the Rebel Headquarters? And why was his or her ship invisible?

Apparently, it wasn't the Palace after all - it takes a (short and slow) warp trip in a shuttle to get from Rebel City to the Palace. Of course, with the Palace being mobile, it's not all that strange that it would currently be located a short hop from Rebel Central. But it would be odd for it to first fly in to do the bombardment, invisible, then fly back out and decloak, and then receive Burnham and Lorca.

The palace was about two minutes away at warp one, which is lightspeed. Two lightminutes from Earth would put you at the orbit of Venus, or halfway to Mars. That's a bit far to be firing weapons -- I believe torpedoes are supposed to travel at warp one, and we've never seen a torp go more than about thirty seconds.

However, the shuttle appeared to be remote controlled on its approach to the palace, and when Burnham contacted Saru he had no idea where the palace was despite being in the same system, so apparently the Empire has a way of masking a ship's location on long range sensors without cloaking it to the naked eye. If that's true, the palace would've moved after firing to keep its location secret, and likely again after picking up the shuttle.
 
Sure, like the time O'Brien died and was replaced by his own future version. That came up dozens of times. Or was brainwashed into thinking he'd spent 20 years in prison and got so traumatised he wanted to kill himself. That definitely got mentioned again. Oh, no, wait.

I was more comparing it to once we find out Bashir is an augment. Or large portions of the arcs of Sisko and Odo. Or Garak for that matter.

O'Brien didn't really have an "arc" other than his family, which made him unusual for DS9, but he was constructed as the everyman, which limited what they could do.
 
I didn't criticize it for having magic in it, I criticized it for having too much magic in it. There has to be some limitation and consistency within the fantasy world you're creating. Discovery has no sense of grounding.

She was stiff as hell (that's not normally associated with camp). Even so there's a difference between intentional camp and unintentional.
My logic, where Michelle Yeoh is concerned, is unclear. They could make a show called Michelle Yeoh Watching The Weather Channel and I'd probably watch it.
 
I think the ISS Buran and USS Buran switched places; if MU Lorca survived its destruction by the Klingons in the Prime universe, there is every reason to believe that PU Lorca survived destruction by Klingon rebels in the MU. Maybe he joined the rebels?

I like the idea of the USS Buran with PU Lorca and his entire crew safe - coming in to rescue at key moment.
 
This is Enterprise mission statement, the show is not about Enterprise
Agreed. Therefore a new mission statement is in order. I'll give it a shot...

"These are the voyages of the Starship Discovery. It's mission, to defeat mush mouthed hairless Klingons, to allow transformed human Klingon hybrids to infiltrate the only mushroom driven ship in the fleet, to awkwardly go where all Star Trek has gone before (MU that is)."
 
I could ask for a Star Trek fanbase that APPRECIATES flawed, compelling characters rather than casting about looking for reasons to be hyper critical all the time.

well.gif

But that's just me.

I don't think Discovery's "characters" really qualify as such yet honestly. Their actions are mostly driven by the needs of the plot (whether in each individual episode or the season as a whole). To the extent it exists it has been widely inconsistent (things like Burnham first being written as a pesudo-Vulcan, and then having it dropped entirely).

If Season II gets the character development nailed down better, I'll be a lot happier. As it is, it just clears the better than VOY/ENT bar for me, but isn't great TV.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top