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

[Crazy Eddie]

It was gratuitous. You don't need gore at this point to drive home the point that the Mirror Universe is a brutal place.

Indeed, the scene where one of Lorca's followers gets injected with splode-juice already accomplished that.

In this case, though, it's another datapoint for the fact that the Emperor really doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything and would probably kill her entire staff if they saw her trip over a crack in the floor.

 

[Kpnuts]

But hey at least we got Discovery FINALLY flying through space this episode, rather than just sitting their like a lame duck. Maybe next time that shot can last more than one a half seconds.

What's next, them visiting a THIRD planet in 13 episodes?

 

[Kpnuts]

Sympathy for the devil is a good album but an overrated concept. In any case, I think they have been doing that with Lorca

And that's what made him intriguing and complex! Hopefully they haven't ruined his character after the last episode's reveal but I'm not getting my hopes up

 

[eschaton]

Indeed, the scene where one of Lorca's followers gets injected with splode-juice already accomplished that.

In this case, though, it's another datapoint for the fact that the Emperor really doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything and would probably kill her entire staff if they saw her trip over a crack in the floor.

I've been thinking about how in TNG, Chain of Command's torture scenes managed to be absolutely brutal and soul-crushing without being gory in the slightest. DIS could learn from rewatching that two-partner.

 

[Kpnuts]

Indeed, the scene where one of Lorca's followers gets injected with splode-juice already accomplished that.

Wow, I'd completely forgotten about that part! Another stupid, childish scene thanks to yet more braindead writing. He imploded from the inside, more shock value!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Why am I not surprised that someone who has "Your mom" as their location is loving Discovery's juvenile writing?

I don't know how to answer that question. Maybe I should ask your mother?

Why the fuck am I still watching this show if I hate it so much? Because I really, really enjoyed the first ten episodes. Then, they went into the mirror universe and idiotically killed Culber, idiotically made Tyler Voq, idiotically had Lorca come from that universe all along.

What do you mean "then?" Tyler was always Voq. That's kind of the whole basis of his character at this point. And L'Rell now has to be tormented with the fact that she had to close off Voq's personality forever just to keep him from killing himself, which means the Klingon she loves and admires can never come back. EVERYTHING about her dastardly plan to infiltrate Discovery has completely blown up in her face now and she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to live with it.

Meanwhile, Burnham has just finally connected the dots on the fact that Lorca is an even bigger asshole than she ever dreamed possible, that this entire situation has been one gigantic con job, and that NONE of the things she took to be true have actually been what she thought they were. There's probably a lesson in there about not getting caught up in appearances, and about being adaptable enough not to be drowned by the albatross of your own preconceptions... but that's probably too "juvenile" for you, yes?

 

[eschaton]

Wow, I'd completely forgotten about that part! Another stupid, childish scene thanks to yet more braindead writing. He imploded from the inside, more shock value!

The odd thing is they talked about how painful of a death it would be, but he died so quickly and with so much gore that there would essentially be no pain at all.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I've been thinking about how in TNG, Chain of Command's torture scenes managed to be absolutely brutal and soul-crushing without being gory in the slightest. DIS could learn from rewatching that two-partner.

Or maybe TNG could have learned something from watching Discovery. Torture tends to be pretty bloody and unpleasant, you know.

For that matter: I remember being hilariously underwhelmed by Fajo's "varon-T disruptor" thingie. it's supposed to be super painful and brutal to the point that it's illegal, but he uses it finally and... what the hell? She glows, she screams, she dies. Dying is GENERALLY painful, so the point is kind of lost. It's not like the disruptor flays the skin off its victims when it kills them or something.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The odd thing is they talked about how painful of a death it would be, but he died so quickly and with so much gore that there would essentially be no pain at all.

THAT was mainly for shock value. Both for the audience and for Lorca. And it was also pretty cool.

 

[Kpnuts]

I don't know how to answer that question. Maybe I should ask your mother?

Sigh.

What do you mean "then?" Tyler was always Voq.

Yep, but the reveal hadn't happened. I was enjoying the show watching it in ignorance, and when word got out that that might be the case, I was hoping they'd find some clever way of doing it. But no, surgically altered a Klingon to look flawlessly human. Butchered Klingon organs and turned them into human organs. Grafted a personality onto another. Terrible.

And L'Rell now has to be tormented with the fact that she had to close off Voq's personality forever just to keep him from killing himself, which means the Klingon she loves and admires can never come back. EVERYTHING about her dastardly plan to infiltrate Discovery has completely blown up in her face now and she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to live with it.

IF we get that sort of pay off and those developments get interesting, then that'll be one positive, to an awful build-up. I'm not holding my breath though.

Meanwhile, Burnham has just finally connected the dots on the fact that Lorca is an even bigger asshole than she ever dreamed possible, that this entire situation has been one gigantic con job, and that NONE of the things she took to be true have actually been what she thought they were. There's probably a lesson in there about not getting caught up in appearances, and about being adaptable enough not to be drowned by the albatross of your own preconceptions... but that's probably too "juvenile" for you, yes?

You shouldn't have to fill in the cracks with your own narrative like that. Again, let's see where it goes, but I hold out almost no hope the writer's will do something interesting with it.

 

[Kpnuts]

Or maybe TNG could have learned something from watching Discovery. Torture tends to be pretty bloody and unpleasant, you know.

Which torture scene did you enjoy more? Picard's in Chain of Command or Agoniser Booth scene #14 from whatever pretentious episode title the Discovery writers came up with this week?

 

[Hythlodeus]

if you 'enjoy' torture, which I hope you don't honestly, then there is something very wrong with you

 

[eschaton]

THAT was mainly for shock value. Both for the audience and for Lorca. And it was also pretty cool.

It's a bit off topic, but it reminds me how people tend to be more opposed to execution by firing squad than lethal injection, even though the former is far quicker and more painless than the latter. People tend to misinterpret gory to mean painful.

The explody thing was also pretty lame. I can't think of any compound you could inject into someone which would dissolve their body essentially instantaneously without also blowing up a good portion of the surrounding area. Anything which would turn a body into vapor would generate lots of waste heat after all.

 

[Kpnuts]

if you 'enjoy' torture, which I hope you don't honestly, then there is something very wrong with you

You know what I mean ffs. Which episode did you find more compelling as a piece of fictional entertainment

 

[Hythlodeus]

You know what I mean ffs. Which episode did you find more compelling as a piece of fictional entertainment

both tried to accomplish very different things with their torture scenes. to compare them, there fore is not only not honest, but similar if not the same like comparing the sex scene at the beginning of Basic Instinct with the one from Bridesmaids

 

[137th Gebirg]

Or then their very intention was to create ominous confusion... A valid cliffhanger technique, one that often angers the viewers of Part II (to see where it leads, read Stephen King's Misery).

Or it could just be bad writing/editing/direction. The simpler explanation is usually the correct one. I love Discovery like the next person here, but the last episode was quite sloppy in some places. Sorry...just doesn't track here.

For example, after realizing that much of NuBSG's "plan" was literally nothing more than the writers throwing random shit against a wall that sounded "kewl" for that episode (and conveniently forgetting about it in all episodes thereafter), and with Moore and Eick admitting as much, I'm wary of assigning grand conspiratorial designs to these stories and giving them more credit where credit is due. One thing that always comes to mind was one scene with Roslyn reading the Book of Pythia to Adama and finding a reference to "He who should not be named". Who the hell was it? The Cylon Imperious Leader? Count Iblis? Fucking Valdemort?!? Many of us fans spent whole seasons debating who it could be and never got a payout. Nothing in the Blu-Ray commentary, either - in fact, IIRC, that line of dialog was talked-over by the narrators and never commented on. Feh! Too much wasted effort trying to dig down into deeper meanings that were never there. Not even intentional red herrings to invoke misdirection and thought-provoking analisys. Just...nothing.

They've done a pretty good job in general in DISCO, IMO, but I think the things that people were confused about in "Vaulting Ambition" was due to the fore-mentioned lack of focus on a cohesive narrative. The magical ISS Charon Palace location is another good example. Is it nearby and can fire while cloaked or several parsecs away and has near-unlimited-range weapons capability? If they were close enough to lay waste to a planet, then why did Burnam and Lorca need to take a shuttle to it at warp for an extended period of time? Why not just beam over? If they could fire on a planetary target at such an immense distance, why did Georgiou complain about "warping all the way across the empire" (paraphrasing there) to get to the rebel planet and finish the job that Michael couldn't? Too many incongruities in too many places for it to be some intentional cliffhanger tactic to keep viewers on the hook.

Nope. Just bad production (in this case).

 

[XCV330]

Wow, I'd completely forgotten about that part! Another stupid, childish scene thanks to yet more braindead writing. He imploded from the inside, more shock value!

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ok

 

[137th Gebirg]

It's the Empire, they use the Imperial system, not the metric

That's a good one.

 

[XCV330]

Which torture scene did you enjoy more? Picard's in Chain of Command or Agoniser Booth scene #14 from whatever pretentious episode title the Discovery writers came up with this week?

Fill me in. Is "Loud as a Whisper" pretentious?

 

[Noname Given]

There’s also the strangeness with the water which was so important it made the previews. Also summarily dropped.

Lots of writer and hence idea turnover here.

Regular warp drive WARPS spacetrime. My point: Every technology will have something not seen before that once it's used regularly will become mundane/expected, etc. Plus remember during those sequences it wasn't working as expected/predicted and they were only jumping a few hundred yards in the vastness of space.

Well after all the fan complaints about the Klingons, obviously they're listening to what the people have to say and

sorry. couldn't keep a straight face.

To be fair, the series had 10 episodes filmed - 3 more fully scripted and they were plotting out and finalizing scripts on the last two. My point: The series was practically "in the can" before fans watching had a chance to give feedback based on an actual streamed/aired episode.