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

I shall never concede to this; never!

You do have a really awesome way of pronouncing "schedule," though.

...or should I say, zchedule!

 

I flat-out love about half the episodes on the list, and am tremendously entertained by the rest (except Prodigal Daughter), so it's not a super convincing argument.

This, however, gives me pause.

 

#imwithyou on this, man. I love most of those episodes as well with the exceptions of prodigal daughter, and the Winn/dukat hook up part of 'til death do us part' (they were sick sons of bitches to inflict that on the audience). Also Time's orphan i usally skip that. It's like molly fell down a time well, who cares.

 

*Takei Voice* ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

They really need to spend more time on SFX. From what I've heard they were really chasing the deadlines.

 

I thought the SFX were pretty good. There was a nice weight to Discovery as it stabilized itself in the underground caverns. It's a small moment, but one of my favorites

 

The #1 thing they need to spend time on is characterization in Season 2.

I mean, honestly, Harry Kim was a better fleshed out character than Saru, Stamets, or Tilly.

 

Are you talking about "simultation"?

 

Seriously? he remained Ensign Eager for all of seven years and every time he showed growth, he was regressed by the next episode. The exception is Kim being given extra responsibility to command the ship on the night shift, but that still went nowhere. Saru went from being a cowardly lion who second guessed himself to an able starship commander, stamets went from cantankerous and anti-social to less cantankerous and began engaging in friendships with other crewmembers and also less full of himself. And sweet beautiful Tilly, went from being an awkward, wide-eyed cadet who dreamed of being on the command track to someone who was able to assert herself when the need arose, stand up to senior officers and got herself onto the command track. Also they all got promotions.

 

Harry Kim missed his parents and played the clarinet; he may have also kept Neelix as a pet and had a tattoo on his face. I'm 95% certain he destroyed Boothby's shack with a frozen dodge ball.

 

Harry Kim had a personality. He played the clarinet. He was close to his parents. He left a girlfriend at home. He was good friends with Tom Paris. He was almost universally terrible with women. He didn't have character growth, but he had a character. Frankly, a lot of people are stagnant through their adult life, so his portrayal was very realistic.

The same is not true in Discovery. Does Saru have any hobbies? Has Tilly dated someone seriously? Does Stamets have any living family? We have no idea, because the show is so stingy with the sort of "Piller filler" earlier Trek shows had. It was crammed so heavily with plot that it didn't step back and let us know much of anything about the characters - unless it somehow interfaced with Burnham's arc. The one major exception was Stamets having his relationship established with Culber - which had a few sweet moments. But once the series checked off the box of "gay relationship established" it was essentially jettisoned.

I don't care if the characters had an arc during the season really, because I don't know much about who they are yet. They still seem more like archetypes to me than plausible human beings.

Hell, lemme give you an example of what I mean. On another forum, someone linked to this scene from DS9:



This is a great scene, because in only 90 seconds, we get a great reinforcement of character traits of half of the main cast. Quark is conniving but lovable. Worf is angry and has no sense of humor. Odo is perpetually exasperated with Quark. Kira flies off the handle. O'Brien's just an everyman with a job to do and wants to get back to it.

 

Ah yes, I see your point now. I misunderstood and thought you were talking about character growth. I think out of the three characters you mentioned Saru probably came in last. We know he like blueberries, and his people got eaten a lot but that is about it. Stamets however we did get some info, like his uncle is in a beatles cover band and he likes opera and that tilly annoys him. We know that part of the reason for tilly being the way she is is because of her mother, who it's implied she does not have a great relationship with. Also she does seem to be fairly carefree about relationships and has mentioned different phases that she went through, example being, having a previous 'thing' for military men and more recently musicians. But yes I agree that we did not get as much Piller filler. One of the issues i had with Discovery is the breakneck speeds of the episodes, there was often little room for the characters to breath and for those piller filler moments to be injected. Hopefully that will change in season 2.

 

Harry Kim was a nervous, unproven and an unconfident Ensign when he started. But by God, by the end of 7 seasons, 75,000 Ly from home, filled with dangerous missions, dealing with life or death situations to get coffee out of nebulas, that boy came out a Man. Because age. There was literally not a single difference between "Caretaker" Kim and "Endgame" Kim. As a viewer, I would much rather have Saru, Stamets or Tilly on a show. They have not yet whined for 7 seasons, while each getting much deserved promotions during the show. Cmd. Saru was awesome, showed great leadership skills and the first Kelpian to receive medal of honour. Lt Cmd. Stamets developed a way to fly across the galaxy in an instint (without turning the pilot into a space-lizard), willing to sacrifice it all to save lives. He lost a loved one and carried on his duty. Ens. Tilly not only proved to be an everyday, lovable human badass who knows her shit, she did all this before even being promoted an Ensign.

Harry Kim = Ensign Mayweather (if he had a friend)

 

He's also been in more episodes so there's more "filler". Still, all three are more interesting in 15 episodes than Kim ever will be.

 

Well that's a different thing. The SFX guys aren't working on scripts and writers aren't creating the SFX.

 

Isn't that in their job description?

 

Harry Kim.. that cardboard cutout they propped up on the side of the bridge sometimes? Are you sure?

 

This is the most depressing thing I've read all day. Totally re-evaluating my life right now.

Anywho, I'm not inclined to disagree about good old Harry Kim (clarinet playing mamma's boy), but I would say you're not allowing the Discovery crew the same leeway as you do him. We don't about Tilly's boyfriends, but we do know shes the nervous girl who's wild at parties and is seriously ambitious about command training (she's also known in the Mirror Universe as Sylvia MuthaF**king Killy!). We don't know about Saru's hobbies, but we know he hero worshiped Captain Georgiou, is constantly plagued with fear, and swings his arms at his sides 'cause he's got mad strides (yo).

You're quick to dismiss Stamets's relationship with Culber, but I think their relationship tracked nicely (until Culber's neck was unceremoniously broken). I recall Culber's McCoy-esque annoyance with Stamets for risking his life early on (which was nice foreshadowing of their relationship), their heart to heart while brushing their teeth, the beautiful story Stamets told Burnham of how they met, a catatonic Stamets whisking Culber's body away from sickbay to protect his already gone love, their final goodbye in the mycelial realm, and the memory of Dr. Culber helping Stamets pilot Discovery home from the Mirror Universe. (On top of this, Stamets hates lurkers, hates military appropriation of science, enjoys friendly rivalries with scientific colleagues, has an uncle in a Beatles cover band, and was testy/obstinate until a fateful run-in with tardigrade DNA).

Discovery is more densely plotted due to it's serialized format divided by its short season, and it didn't have that many scenes in Ten Forward with the crew watching Riker play trombone, but it still had great character building. Are they all the equal of Jadzia Dax or Harry Kim? No, but not one is a cardboard cutout.

 

Creating SFX is the job of the people who create the SFX. The writers say "the ship explodes". The SFX guys are the ones who make that happen on screen.