Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x02 - "New Eden"

[Greg Cox]

They could have given them a choice. They didn’t have to leave if they didn’t want to.
Plus, isn’t diverting that meteor also breaking the rule? By that logic they should have let them all die.

That's TNG's ridiculously over-literal version of the PD. Kirk thought nothing of saving those transplanted Native Americans from an asteroid back on TOS. This was a similar situation.

There's a difference between not contaminated their culture and covertly keeping them from being obliterated.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Dangit, 17 pages already? I have some catching up to do. But before that... I'm loving the personality they are giving Detmer in tiny little snippets. She seems quirky but also like...a total gearhead. She has this youthful self-deprecating streak to her, but then her brain kicks in and tells her, wait you got this! I like that a lot.

So now, I think that her line in Brother where she calls the Enterprise a beauty isn't so much like WOW its the Enterprise everyone around should be impressed...but more like her admiring it because its a classic and because she's a pilot and not necessarily because its the Enterprise. That wasn't my read the first time (even if that might have been obvious to others, lol...). Specifically, the way someone might ogle a classic car. I could imagine her tuning up a shuttlecraft off-duty with an actual wrench. Something Tom Paris-y.

Edit: oh! And this is a nice parallel line to Nhan commenting on how 'expensive' Discovery looks. The meta commentary is that this is a new (expensive) show, but it's all based on a classic, a 'beauty'.

 

[Vger23]

I could get my head wrapped around it if what Gene meant was that all these opposing, stovepipe Earth religions had taken a back seat to a more tolerant, universal approach to faith.

But to imply that humans are just "too smart" or "too evolved" to have any kind of faith is a bit offensive.

 

[Campe]

At the end of Bread and Circuses, Uhura points out to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy that they are mistaken in their belief that the planet's slaves were pagan "sun" worshipers; rather she explains that they were worshiping the Son of God.

At that point, our heroes all come to an "a ha" moment, reconsidering the events of the episode in hindsight. However, that "a ha" moment looked a bit too understanding to be coming from characters who have no attachment whatsoever to religion. That didn't seem to be coming from characters of a planet that had abandoned religion, and it seemed (at least to me) more than just an unattached recognition of the similarities to Earth's history regarding Romans and Christians.

Maybe Gene Roddenberry himself felt that Earth would abandon religion by the 23rd century, but that does not really jibe with what he presented on screen. And what Roddenberry presented on screen is more relevant to this discussion that what he might have personally felt.

A fair point. I thought Roddenberry had been off doing other things while Gene Coon mainly ran the show for season two. HOWEVER, apparently both Roddenberry and Coon were credited with "Bread and Circuses."

 

[KirkusOveractus]

I could get my head wrapped around it if what Gene meant was that all these opposing, stovepipe Earth religions had taken a back seat to a more tolerant, universal approach to faith.

But to imply that humans are just "too smart" or "too evolved" to have any kind of faith is a bit offensive.

Also, since it's something coming from Ron Moore, this would be coming from Roddenberry in 1987, after he's been propped up for years by people their interpretation of his "Vision", which was a utopian society that Roddenberry started to believe himself.

 

[Vger23]

Sadly, there are people who would agree with some of your hypotheticals. I got into an argument with someone online about the gender identity thing, well before Disco premiered, and he thought that the idea of no conflict and that all were accepted within humanity would mean the homogenization of all things -- meaning if you were LGBTQI? You would be "fixed." Needless to say I ceased the conversation right after that.

I think its a mistake to suggest that all of these things can't exist even into the future. The idea is that we become accepting of all of our differences not that we try to fix them or push them into oblivion. I don't care if that's homosexuality, religion OR Asian culture. That, in my opinion, should be the future Roddenberry speaks of. But apparently, Gene might have disagreed with me on a few of those points.

Very well said. Exactly my point.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

But to imply that humans are just "too smart" or "too evolved" to have any kind of faith is a bit offensive.

I didn't know the guy, but when I read this I thought, 'lol, classic Gene.'

 

[Noname Given]

Did anyone else notice that the sound effects for the distress beacon were right out of TOS? I believe they were stock "radio" effects used throughout the series, most predominantly in S1 ("Balance of Terror" comes immediately to mind).

Yep - the sounds were used in both TOS - "Balance of Terror" and "City On The Edge Of Forever" (When Spock is working with 'Bearskins and Knives' )

In general I LOVE the sound design as there are a lot of TOS era sounds mixed in. The Tricorder scan sound has TOS elements as do the Beds in Sickbay, and there a lot of TOS era sounds on the Discovery Bridge.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'll have to re-rate this episode. I gave it an 8. I think it's a 9.

There's not enough of a punch to make "New Eden" a 10, but look at the discussion it's generating.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I'll have to re-rate this episode. I gave it an 8. I think it's a 9.

There's not enough of a punch to make "New Eden" a 10, but look at the discussion it's generating.

Totally. I'm loving that they're establishing that these faiths do exist in the future, but everyone just minds their own business about it and that science is just part of their faith as well; evolved forms of today's religions without the persecution or the judginess about who is right or wrong. This is how its handled in the books when people mention their faiths, and is, as has been said above by others, the version of Gene's utopia that I wanted.

 

[Gonzo]

Watched the episode and loved it from start to finish, the tone and pace were just right.

CBS and the scriptwriters have finally realised that the show doesn't need to be holier than thou or politically correct, all it needs is honest story telling and characters who can sell it to the viewer, I am sure there will be heavier episodes but that's fine as long as they are able to keep it balanced.

As I mentioned in my earlier post before I watched it I have no problem at all with Tilly, her actions in this episode and the first one are well within her established character and are fine.

Anson Mount is doing an excellent job as Pike and is really helping to anchor the show, CBS would be mad not to go ahead with the Pike/Enterprise show now, in fact I would go so far as to say it's a safe bet at this point unless contracts/trademarks outright prevent it.

All they need to do now is sort out the Klingons and their ships and we are gold.

It's a pretty safe bet that the USS Discovery won't survive the end of the series for obvious continuity reasons but it wouldn't surprise me if Pike takes some of them with him to the repaired Enterprise, my money is on Tilly and Detmer at this point.

Straight in with a 9 out of 10, but only because I want to keep the 10 in reserve.

 

[Noname Given]

Where was this ever stated?

In TOS - S2 "Return To Tomorrow":
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/51.htm

SARGON: A struggle for such goals and the unleashing of such power that you could not comprehend.

KIRK: Then perhaps your intelligence wasn't so great, Sargon. We faced a similar crisis in our early nuclear age. We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves.

SARGON: And we survived our primitive nuclear era, my son. But there comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face.

 

[DSG2k]

I LOVE the sound design as there are a lot of TOS era sounds mixed in.

It sounds like a bad fanfilm where they got the old CD and some .wav files from the old Trek5 site and just used whichever noises they liked. It's faux-expensive, faux-quality work.

I particularly disliked the TNG error sound used alongside anything like a negative response being given by the character, even if the computer shouldn't have had such context. That was just lazy and ill-considered.

Why would the 2050 tech sound like the 2260s, and why would the 2250s be such a mishmash of 2260s-2380ish?

But, of course, sound continuity is a pet peeve of mine.

http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2013/01/trek-sound-continuity.html

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Where was this ever stated?

The Omega Glory:

SPOCK: Kohms? Communists? The parallel is almost too close, Captain. It would mean they fought the war your Earth avoided, and in this case, the Asiatics won and took over this planet.

"The War Earth avoided" was pretty clearly a nuclear holocaust.

In TOS - S2 "Return To Tomorrow":
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/51.htm

Oh, and that too.

 

[DigificWriter]

I've said this elsewhere, but what TNG presented was Gene Roddenberry's attempt at "revisionist history". I'm not a big TOS person, but I have enough "lay" knowledge about it to recognize that ENT, DSC (even in Season 1), DS9, and VOY are far more similar to it in spirit and tone than they are different from it, and yet it's TNG that has somehow become the "standard" for what Star Trek was "supposed" to be.

 

[Seven of Five]

So I gave that one a 7. Down from last week's 8, but still good.

I'm still loving Tilly and Saru. Pike is awesome!

I loved the links between the Red Angel that everyone seems to be seeing now. What does it mean?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Pilot license at 12, for a starship?

Probably for something smaller.

 

[Lord Garth]

Why would the 2050 tech sound like the 2260s, and why would the 2250s be such a mishmash of 2260s-2380ish?

But, of course, sound continuity is a pet peeve of mine.

http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2013/01/trek-sound-continuity.html

For 2260s sounds in the 2250s, you can just flip the way you look at it. The 2260s sounds weren't brand new at the time. In the 2010s, not every mechanical sound we hear is from this decade.

But for sounds from the 24th Century in DSC? I understand what you're saying, I can't really rationalize TNG sounds in DSC like I can TOS, but I just roll with it. It's such a minor thing. At this point, I no longer care.

 

[matthunter]

She probably got a shuttle licence early. The actual control layouts for shuttles and starships don't appear dissimilar, but you'd need an understanding of inertia and thrust etc to distinguish the two. You can make your own jokes from here.

 

[Tuskin38]

It sounds like a bad fanfilm where they got the old CD and some .wav files from the old Trek5 site and just used whichever noises they liked. It's faux-expensive, faux-quality work.

I particularly disliked the TNG error sound used alongside anything like a negative response being given by the character, even if the computer shouldn't have had such context. That was just lazy and ill-considered.

Why would the 2050 tech sound like the 2260s, and why would the 2250s be such a mishmash of 2260s-2380ish?

But, of course, sound continuity is a pet peeve of mine.

http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2013/01/trek-sound-continuity.html

Oh, you're back, joy.