As will be the case, Thursdays are not good for me, so I watched this yesterday and got around to commenting on it today, 52 pages into the thread.
Overall, a good second episode. Definitely some of the old
Trek vibe and revisiting some common
Trek tropes as well: General Order 1 debates, a human colony brought from Earth's past, with a few more modern twists. To be honest, I was half expecting the distress call to be from
Father Gabriel with the focus on the church!
If we count "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Star" as one episode, then "Context is for Kings" is the show's second episode, so I thought it was interesting that Pike specifically mention "context" at the end of this episode, right around the time Lorca said the titular quote.
So the spore drive is still being used and they get in a line from Pike to lampshade the controversy over it by saying he's going to have to go on faith (in other words, "Hey nitpickers, like Basil said in
Austin Powers in Goldfinger, 'I suggest you don't worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself. That goes for you all, too.'"). I liked how that tied with the theme of the episode, though.
I think we've firmly established Pike as more Picard-like with the Prime Directive in that he's not above interpreting it, a bit when the need arises. I'd much rather the Prime Directive was like that, as in this case there were some very good reasons for violating it: (a) the "natural development" of these people was already disrupted and (b) the time-period they came from and are sort-of stuck at was extremely close to the invention of warp drive---had their ancestors stayed on Earth and survived, they would have witnessed it. But, then I guess the Prime Directive has always been more about the story element aspect than a logical rule.
Tilly, as usual, was a joy, but her childhood friend was a bit obvious in being a figment/phantom. You can definitely see the overarching storyline come into play all throughout here. It's nice to see she's so driven out of concern for Stamets. They've really done a great job in making this into a family. I liked getting to know "Owo" a little better. I want more, though, since this little bit opened up so many questions: There are Luddite groups on Earth? What compels them to shun technology? Why/how did she leave the group? Still hoping for more on Detmer, though (I'm a fan of redheads and
Disco gives us two!).
<==(my age at the time)
