Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x15 - "Will You Take My Hand?"

[XCV330]

Lol, maybe, but look at the Klingons in TOS era. They are basically toothless. They don't inspire fear like they did in DSC and Kirk barely takes them seriously.

The Organians did

 

[Nyotarules]

Stamets' offhand comment about Starfleet will look for an artificial way to pilot the spore drive surprised me. I guess we can assume that Starfleet never figures out how to replace Stamets as the pilot of the spore drive and that is why it is never mentioned again in Trek?

The spore drive is like the devastating war, its never mentioned again on screen but somewhere in the Federation someone is talking about it. Treat it like starship toilets, they are out there somewhere but never seen.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Trek captains are typically portrayed as being similar to Burnham onscreen. Kirk and Picard were nearly always right.

The difference is that if Kirk had pulled this stunt out of nowhere, I would have believed it, unlike Burnham (or Picard). Because Kirk actually has a history of pulling unusual solutions out of a hat, and rejecting odds Spock has given him. Burnham is an exceptional officer (and more believable than Kirk in that regard, IMO), but ‘Let's give L'Rell the WMD’ was one that only Lorca would have done in this series. Oh, and maybe Sarek and the admiral, because their stunt was crazier (until we actually found out why they were doing it). Giving it more than a few of seconds of screen time would have been very useful to believability and would have salvaged the episode. Heck, even a throw away line by Burnham or Saru ‘I may have one unorthodox solution on how to use your WMD without committing a genocide, that will go hand in hand with your absurd plan to recruit the terran emperor’

ETA: And someone, perhaps Tilly, remarking ‘That plan actually worked?

 

[jsp3970]

Burnham gave L'Rell the detonator. The bomb was secure at that point. If the Klingons had attacked Earth when L'Rell had the detonator, there was nothing Starfleet could have done about it. Now, maybe Starfleet had a backup detonator to prevent this scenario. In that case, the Klingons could have simply waited until after they had physically secured the bomb itself which would not have taken very long and then attacked.

While it did seem a dangerous thing to do it was a gesture towards the Klingon's by the Federation. Basically by giving L'Rell the detonator the Federation said 'We could have blown your home world up but that's not what the federation is about. We are peaceful and we want to live in peace with you.' By choosing a nobody like L'Rell she was given the chance to gain more power than she could have ever had otherwise. She would have been crazy to turn it down!

 

[137th Gebirg]

Ouch! Someone is grouchy about not getting a writing gig on the new series!

Exactly so.

 

[zenophite]

It doesn't help that Burnham is possibly the biggest Mary Sue in all of Star Trek legitimately on the level of Fanfiction tier Suedom.

The last 5-10 minutes of this episode were pretty much "Look how important and awesome Burnham is and how she's literally the best person ever and how everyone literally loves her so much and fawns over how great she is". The entire show, it's characters, it's plot, it's sheer universe, thoughout this entire season, has basically been over how amazing Burnham is and how she's the most important and smart and beautiful person ever. I'm not even exaggerating when I say nearly every major plot beat around this entire show is how important and awesome Burnham is and how she's so amazing and awesome it literally transcends space-time that even Mirror Universe versions think she is the most important and brilliant thing ever.

So Burnham is the most beautiful, brilliant, wonderful, amazing person ever, the sister of Spock, Sareks favourite child, literally smarter than the entire Vulcan race getting the best scores ever from the Vulcan Science academy, and to top this all off, they get the human equivalent of a brick to play her.

An excellent summation and fully in agreement with my own thinking on this whole affair.

I only hesitated to say 'Mary Sue' earlier because of it's recent use (and quite fairly so) in relation to a particular character of that Other franchise...and the inevitable whining and misdirected accusations of sexism in regards to it.

 

[Boomer359]

Nothing McCoy said in the Prime Timeline applies to the Discovery timeline Klingons.

That bit especially given it would make certain characters in past prime timeline series impossibilities.

This was mostly a joke, but, really, nothing about this different anatomy necessarily precludes the existence of certain characters later on in the franchise. As far as I recall, the only Klingon / Human offspring we see conceived through actual sex is Alexander, whose father was Klingon and mother half-Klingon. Depending on how K'Ehleyr's specific anatomy shook out, that could still have worked. All of the other hybrid characters could have been conceived through some external, medically-aided means.

 

[eltel99uk]

....Depending on how K'Ehleyr's specific anatomy shook out, that could still have worked....

Also depending on what she was into. I'll get my coat.....

 

[Kevin Wolff]

The Organians did

They were evolved lifeforms playing at being human. They took the Klingons and Federation seriously like a parent does when course-correcting their children. Now I want to watch that episode again

 

[cooleddie74]

Don't forget the ENT prequel episode, "Observer Effect." It's a pale followup (or forerunner) to the Organian episode of TOS but we do get to see the first moments of the Organians interacting with humans and their plans for another encounter sometime in the future.

 

[Lord Garth]

I had to think about the rating. Before I saw the episode, based on everything I was dreading, I was worried I'd end up giving the episode something like a 4. Then, somehow, they managed to dodge all the traps I thought they might end up in. I was impressed enough that I had to wait for my impression to sober up.

I give this episode a 9.

Some of it's too pat -- and I wish Michael didn't offer a comment after everything Cornwell said at the end, but otherwise, as I said before, the finale worked.

So, I might as well average out the entire season right here...

"The Vulcan Hello" & "Battle at the Binary Stars" -- 7 (I'll count this twice, since it's two episodes)
"Context Is for Kings" -- 8
"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lambs Cry" -- 8
"Choose Your Pain" -- 9
"Lethe" -- 10
"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" -- 9
"Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" -- 7
"Into the Forest I Go" -- 10
"Despite Yourself" -- 10
"The Wolf Inside" -- 7
"Vaulting Ambition" -- 10
"What's Past Is Prologue" -- 8
"The War Without, The War Within" -- 7.5
"Will You Take My Hand" -- 9

Season Average: 8.43

 

[cooleddie74]

I still like ENT better. It'll take more work for the show to change my mind about that.

 

[Nerys Myk]

They didn’t play at all with the fact that the Emperor has the next 10 years of Prime knowledge in her head. She could probably use that to make herself rich.

Nah, she's an Emperor. She has people who read all that stuff for her and give her a summery. She's not Biff Tannen.

 

[Romulan_spy]

While it did seem a dangerous thing to do it was a gesture towards the Klingon's by the Federation. Basically by giving L'Rell the detonator the Federation said 'We could have blown your home world up but that's not what the federation is about. We are peaceful and we want to live in peace with you.' By choosing a nobody like L'Rell she was given the chance to gain more power than she could have ever had otherwise. She would have been crazy to turn it down!

Yeah but let's not forget that L'Rell was always portrayed as a zealot, a T'Kumva fanatic that believed the Federation is the greatest threat to "Klingon purity". So yeah, giving a fanatic a WMD so that she can take control of the Klingon empire but not use that leadership position to continue the war, is ballsy to say the least. Some might say implausible. It would be like planting a nuke under an Al Queda base in Aghanistan, giving Zarqawi the detonator so that he can take over Al Queda from Bin Laden and then expecting him to use that power to make peace with the US rather than continue the "jihad" under his banner instead.

 

[cooleddie74]

Nah, she's an Emperor. She has people who read all that stuff for her and give her a summery. She's not Biff Tannen.

The Presidential Election of 2260:

GEORGIOU
MAKE THE FEDERATION GREAT AGAIN

 

[MvRojo]

Then *all* the loose threads are wrapped us at once for tidy disposal as we get yet another "passing of the torch" with the Enterprise at the end. Burnham is not only has her record expunged but is now a hero of the Federation? Apparently, everyone is all cool and kosher with Cornwell to boot.

Why would they have a problem with Cornwell? Her genocide plan had the full approval of the Federation Council.

 

[XCV330]

Why would they have a problem with Cornwell? Her genocide plan had the full approval of the Federation Council.

How many of them new the real plan, or was it only her and Sarek? Did she get her water-vapor-bomb-thingy from one of the Black Badges?

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, they're not going to reprimand Admiral Cornwell. She was following direct orders from the Federation Council itself, and in that situation the military pretty much always has cover from the civilian government even if the plans go horribly wrong.

 

[Ovation]

Mirror Emperor gives plausible deniability to the plan. Post plan assassination of emperor closes the loop.

 

[Cox of Seagulls]

I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that season 2 will be the last season of Star Trek "Discovery". Good riddance.

Saving for posterity.