Spoilers Star Trek: Short Treks 1x03 - "The Brightest Star"

[Cyrus]

Assuming Baul are the predator species, obviously their relationship with Kelpians must have evolved overtime. It may have started as Lion/Gazelle but after both species developed sentience and Baul developed technology it became more like human/cow. Of course humans wouldn’t be eating cows if they were sentient. That is why Baul are not Federation members and PG goes to the trouble of rescuing Saru.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I feel the reverse. Magic was my least favorite episode.

Mine too. By a significant margin.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Is it even confirmed that the Ba'ul are actually native to Kaminar? They obviously have advanced technology, up to and including starships, so theoretically they could be from another world.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Is it even confirmed that the Ba'ul are actually native to Kaminar?

I hope not.

Otherwise Dear Doctor incoming.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Saru was reading and speaking in Baul while fiddling with the Baul device?

1. Kelpiens were reeducated to speak their Alien conquerors language.
2. Kelpians have always spoken Baulish, because they are both native to Kaminar.

You know that if the Kelpiens are left in a dark enough about their own history, the planet they are on might not be Kaminar, or its not their planet of origin.

I'm thinking that they are called Kelpiens because they are kelp flavour Kaminarians, and on other sides of Kaminar, they raise different flavoured kaminarians by feeding them differently.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

on other sides of Kaminar, they raise different flavoured kaminarians by feeding them differently.

Bananians? Licoricians? Vanillans?

 

[XCV330]

it was ok. it was just kinda filler.
so the kelpians eat kelp
and they wind up in the colons of the Co'lans or something.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Just finished watching it and was staying away from the thread to avoid spoilers and I'm glad I did because this was awesome! Absolutely awesome!

I had initially thought that the precept for the Kelpians were that they were part of a binary food chain on a goofy science planet where two sentient species evolved and they got the short end of the stick (honestly, I'd believe that was the initial Fuller envisioned, but I have no evidence for that) but instead we were offered an old school sci-fi dystopia where citizens offer their shit up graciously of faceless asshole aliens.

Firstly, this makes Saru's relationship and with Georgiou and her subsequent death so much more tragic! I was already choked up about it, reinforced by how eloquently the novels have touched on their relationship, but this new information really hits home. I feel like we are experiencing in a single moment the whole of Data's life in Saru, being enlightened by a Starfleet officer and also being able to emotionally process the importance of that moment. It was really something beautiful...absolutely beautiful!

I'm going to sing nothing but praises. I loved it. Anyway, before I go back through the thread, how many of you nerds were like, "um total prime directive violation...!" When the shuttle arrived but were then nodding in agreement when Georgiou explained why she did it anyway...! Seriously, I don't care if it's episodic and Michael doesn't develop at all to maintain canon, but give me a Star Trek: Shenzhou with Captain Georgiou please!

 

[Cyrus]

Saru was reading and speaking in Baul while fiddling with the Baul device?

Somehow I understood Baul too. I recognized "Hello" and "Today".

 

[Lakenheath 72]

If I remember correctly, there were schematics included with the device.

Not an exact analogy. I make 3d puzzles from overseas. Not all of them have the instructions in English; however, I can complete the puzzle by studying the plans showing how the pieces fit together. It looked like Saru was doing something similar - he was constructing the device according to the plans. He would compare the pieces to what he saw in the plans and had the mental capacity to see how the pieces fit together. Was the device a test of intelligence, of solving problems, similar to the problems we give to animals? When I think of pieces falling off a ship, the last thing I would conceive of falling off a ship would be a communications device. This would be more of an internal thing, not an external thing.

According to one of the people behind Discovery, we will get answers to our questions in the second season. I hope they are good answers.

 

[eschaton]

I'm kind of bummed to say that this one didn't do much for me. I thought there was a lot of potential, but it really left me feeling underwhelmed. The whole idea of (SPOILER) Captain PG coming to pick Saru up felt a little off to me. I didn't really make the connection between the unseen species that was taking the Kelpians with the stories of being a "prey species" that Saru had told during S1. I felt like the relationship between Saru and his family was under-developed.

The "small universe" syndrome of Georgiou picking up Saru didn't bother me. It would make sense that she felt some sense of responsibility for Saru, and as soon as she had her own captaincy she would request Saru serve with her.

I do agree with you in general though. Some parts of the episode were so well done (it was a feast visually) but some parts just fell flat and seemed perfuntory.

It seemed very odd to me that even though his sister was in so many of the shots she didn't have a shred of dialogue until the closing "act" when he started to say his goodbyes. I wondered if they were taking a cue from Detmer and Airiam here.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Somehow I understood Baul too. I recognized "Hello" and "Today".

Picard exclusively spoke French for 7 seasons, and 4 movies.

Most of us muddled through that without complaining.

 

[Mudd]

Of course humans wouldn’t be eating cows if they were sentient.

Bets.

 

[Cyrus]

Bets.

I was thinking about it as I wrote that. I think Federation humans wouldn’t, but not sure about our timeline. Cows probably win some rights in 20th century but the current administration would promise to bring back the beef

 

[Mudd]

Federation humans aren't.

 

[DaveyNY]

Anyone care to take a guess as to how many years before Discovery this episode was set?

From what I've read in the behind the scenes stuff, it appears that it was about 18 years.

The article below is with the writers and the third paragraph starts their explanation about that...

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/write...-explain-how-it-fits-into-official-trek-canon

 

[Lord Garth]

My brother brought up a point. Something I hadn't thought of. It bears bringing up here.

When Saru asks Burnham if she saw any Kelpians on the ISS Shenzhou or heard anything about the MU's Kelpians and she said "no", maybe Saru was wondering if Mirror Saru did what he did and made contact with anyone beyond his world.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Since Kelpiens of the mirror universe are so widely praised as food, I'm thinking the Terran Empire learned about it when they conquered Kaminar. So perhaps mirror Saru never got the chance to send out a message.

I mean, he didn't have a name until Burnham gave him one, so it's likely that the Empire got to Kaminar before he was even born.

 

[Timo]

As for the threat ganglia, have they ever done any good to Saru or anybody else?

Saru claims he can sense the coming of death. He's employed by Starfleet, though, so death happens every two weeks or so anyway; he doesn't bother to tell us whether death ever takes him by surprise, although the heavy implication is that e.g. each and every one of Lorca's deaths did.

Back home, predicting death would have been a no-brainer: they could look it up on the calendar...

As for the ganglia themselves, they seem to produce nothing but false positives and false negatives. We never learn the three prisoners would have been doomed when their shuttle departed the Discovery in "Context", say, nor did death result from Burnham staying. And when death came to the particularly delicious-looking specimen in the Mirror Universe lottery, his ganglia did not predict it.

Probably those things react to intestinal troubles, then, and have nothing to do with predictive abilities, subconscious or paranormal or other.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rahul]

This should have been a fuckin' episode.

Like, really. At this point I'm kinda' getting mad at CBS, because these shorts aren't some filler - They are full fledged episodes, that got shafted. Each of these so far had an intriguing, unique concept about the main characters, and each episode suffered from it's short runtime, and that such crucial things happening where so underdeveloped and cut short.

The same holds true for this episode: It's MUCH better than almost everything we saw on the regular show on S1 so far. It feels so, so much more like Star Trek. It offers unique concepts, insights, strange new worlds. And barely manages to scrap more than the surface each time, because of the limited runtime.

That being said: I never imagined Saru to be coming from a totally pre-technology world. I always thought of him coming from, like, a post-apocalyptic Hunger Game's world. Because I find it hard to believe that he can become second officer to Georgiou, when she was already a Leutnant, and he didn't even new basic math.

Also: FUCK CBS. For not even HINTING at when they will be legally available outside North America!

Apart from that: Yeah, great short! I loved it! I just wish... it would have been more.