I've no doubt he will now that he's confident and 'powerful'. Can't wait for sure of himself Saru to bring it.
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x04 - "An Obol for Charon"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I've no doubt he will now that he's confident and 'powerful'. Can't wait for sure of himself Saru to bring it.
Huh....interesting episode. Moments of fun, cool exploration / discovery stuff, some good emotional drama. I loved the "sphere trying to communicate" bit, and the universal translator gag was fun. On the other hand...felt a little rushed, and the plot at times was very Star Trek: Voyager.
Some of the stuff between Stamets and Reno was fun...some felt too forced.
I think the toughest thing about the episode is that we all knew Saru wasn't going to die. So, even though that was well-acted and revealed a lot about Saru's character...it was never a real threat. I am looking forward to seeing how this ties in to our return to his planet.
I'm going to need to think about a rating. I liked it a lot...but it was interesting.
Some of the stuff between Stamets and Reno was fun...some felt too forced.
I think the toughest thing about the episode is that we all knew Saru wasn't going to die. So, even though that was well-acted and revealed a lot about Saru's character...it was never a real threat. I am looking forward to seeing how this ties in to our return to his planet.
I'm going to need to think about a rating. I liked it a lot...but it was interesting.
6/10.
A massive step up from the shit-storm of last week's episode.
Pros:
- The Saru stuff was fantastic. Sonequa's acting was better here. She works so much better in a supporting role than the series lead. Michael didn't solve everyone's problems here.. a welcome change.
- Saru being a Mexican. That was subtle. I liked that. That was pretty good social commentary without it being over-the-top and forced. That was probably the only good example I've ever seen from Discovery of handling real world politics and issues in a respectable and classy manner.
- Pike/Number One. Good stuff there. Very nostalgic, in a way that didn't insult the original versions.
- Fear No More. If this means that Saru will finally stop being a major wimp, I'm all for it. It was holding his character back. He may actually prove to be a better and more entertaining Captain now. C3P0 Saru is finally dead, hopefully they don't reverse this.
- Linus. I liked that. Hopefully the next thing Star Trek does is phase out all these Humanoid alien species and go full CG with non-humanoid alien races. Linus is humanoid but his CG work shows potential to do better things later on, if the show keeps it's excessive budget.
- Universal translator fail. I liked this, but I wish it actually just revealed the languages that all the characters were actually speaking. Would have been interesting to see who is actually speaking English. Probably far less people than we think.
Cons:
- The entire Tilly and The Blob plot was fucking terrible. I suppose this will conveniently explain why Starfleet stops using the spore drive, but damn... did they really have to go Exorcism of Emily Rose with Tilly? When the Blob and Tilly became one..that was laughable. So cheesy.
- Hi, I'm Nhan. I'm back for no reason. Pointless.
- Reno... if they were going to get a comedian on this series to tell modern-day jokes for levity, they could have at least got someone that was actually...funny :/ The deadpan humor was amusing in 'Brother' but it's just the same shtick here. I kept asking myself why is Tig Notaro on this show.
6/10 I can overlook the forced sentiment in the main plot because it was such a welcome change from the cringe material we got last week. Blob Tilly, however, was a disastrous B plot.
Sidenote: The singing in the episode was amusingly better than what we got here.
A massive step up from the shit-storm of last week's episode.
Pros:
- The Saru stuff was fantastic. Sonequa's acting was better here. She works so much better in a supporting role than the series lead. Michael didn't solve everyone's problems here.. a welcome change.
- Saru being a Mexican. That was subtle. I liked that. That was pretty good social commentary without it being over-the-top and forced. That was probably the only good example I've ever seen from Discovery of handling real world politics and issues in a respectable and classy manner.
- Pike/Number One. Good stuff there. Very nostalgic, in a way that didn't insult the original versions.
- Fear No More. If this means that Saru will finally stop being a major wimp, I'm all for it. It was holding his character back. He may actually prove to be a better and more entertaining Captain now. C3P0 Saru is finally dead, hopefully they don't reverse this.
- Linus. I liked that. Hopefully the next thing Star Trek does is phase out all these Humanoid alien species and go full CG with non-humanoid alien races. Linus is humanoid but his CG work shows potential to do better things later on, if the show keeps it's excessive budget.
- Universal translator fail. I liked this, but I wish it actually just revealed the languages that all the characters were actually speaking. Would have been interesting to see who is actually speaking English. Probably far less people than we think.
Cons:
- The entire Tilly and The Blob plot was fucking terrible. I suppose this will conveniently explain why Starfleet stops using the spore drive, but damn... did they really have to go Exorcism of Emily Rose with Tilly? When the Blob and Tilly became one..that was laughable. So cheesy.
- Hi, I'm Nhan. I'm back for no reason. Pointless.
- Reno... if they were going to get a comedian on this series to tell modern-day jokes for levity, they could have at least got someone that was actually...funny :/ The deadpan humor was amusing in 'Brother' but it's just the same shtick here. I kept asking myself why is Tig Notaro on this show.
6/10 I can overlook the forced sentiment in the main plot because it was such a welcome change from the cringe material we got last week. Blob Tilly, however, was a disastrous B plot.
Sidenote: The singing in the episode was amusingly better than what we got here.
I'm going with an eight for this, though I was tempted to give it a nine. It was significantly better than last week, and arguably the best episode of Discovery to date.
What I liked:
First, the show actually made cohesive narrative sense. I was worried from the trailer that there were going to be too many plots again like last week, and it would come across as a "slice of the arc" rather than a cohesive episode. But I was wrong. Saru's subplot was intimately wrapped up in the negative space wedgie this week, to the point they were essentially one and the same. Number One basically had a brief cameo, and Jett Reno fit in pretty seamlessly (though I wonder what the hell she's been doing the last few weeks). Only the Tilly spore-entity subplot kinda stuck out as not related to the main thrust of the episode much, but an A/B format is fine for Trek.
I liked that the show was essentially a more modern take on a typical Trek trope. And I found it refreshing that the search for Spock and the whole Red Angel thing were bumped really, really far down the totem pole this week.
Some of the performances were great this go around. Doug Jones deserves an award for tonight, and carried the episode by sheer force of will. It was great to see him get some focus after barely being an extra for the first three episodes this season. His dialogue even made mention of something I had noted - that he was carrying himself like he was a starfleet officer and nothing more. No longer. Tig Notato was great as well in her role. I was happy to see Stamets actually get a bit of a weightier role this week as well.
What I disliked:
Small elements of the production of the show continue to irk me. There weren't as many as the past two weeks, but there were some fast cuts - particularly away from emotional scenes with Saru and Burnham - which blunted their impact. The music remained a bigger problem. It's too damn high in the mix, and particularly in the earlier portions of the episode I think I missed several lines between it and the distracting ambient noise. Who the hell mixes their sound?
SMG was a bit off in some scenes I think. She did a good job in the final scene with Saru, but in some of the earlier ones her cadence was just...odd. It weakened the scenes considerably.
The main flaw in this episode however was somewhat poor characterization. First, Pike's conclusion that the alien megastructure was belligerent seemed very random and was transparently for story purposes to create a short-lived conflict. I came out of that scene thinking less of him, which shouldn't have happened. More fundamental though is the oddness of the sudden deep relationship between Burnham and Saru. We've had no evidence on camera they particularly liked one another. Their relationship on the Shenzhou was distant and prickly, and even though Saru came to forgive Michael, we didn't really see a budding friendship as we did with Tilly. I understand that for narrative purposes Saru had to be close to someone, and since he knew Burnham the longest (and she is the main character) it should have been her. But this relationship just seems...unearned. Which is a shame, because viewed in isolation, not knowing anything about the arc of Discovery as a whole, this character work comes off a lot better.
What I liked:
First, the show actually made cohesive narrative sense. I was worried from the trailer that there were going to be too many plots again like last week, and it would come across as a "slice of the arc" rather than a cohesive episode. But I was wrong. Saru's subplot was intimately wrapped up in the negative space wedgie this week, to the point they were essentially one and the same. Number One basically had a brief cameo, and Jett Reno fit in pretty seamlessly (though I wonder what the hell she's been doing the last few weeks). Only the Tilly spore-entity subplot kinda stuck out as not related to the main thrust of the episode much, but an A/B format is fine for Trek.
I liked that the show was essentially a more modern take on a typical Trek trope. And I found it refreshing that the search for Spock and the whole Red Angel thing were bumped really, really far down the totem pole this week.
Some of the performances were great this go around. Doug Jones deserves an award for tonight, and carried the episode by sheer force of will. It was great to see him get some focus after barely being an extra for the first three episodes this season. His dialogue even made mention of something I had noted - that he was carrying himself like he was a starfleet officer and nothing more. No longer. Tig Notato was great as well in her role. I was happy to see Stamets actually get a bit of a weightier role this week as well.
What I disliked:
Small elements of the production of the show continue to irk me. There weren't as many as the past two weeks, but there were some fast cuts - particularly away from emotional scenes with Saru and Burnham - which blunted their impact. The music remained a bigger problem. It's too damn high in the mix, and particularly in the earlier portions of the episode I think I missed several lines between it and the distracting ambient noise. Who the hell mixes their sound?
SMG was a bit off in some scenes I think. She did a good job in the final scene with Saru, but in some of the earlier ones her cadence was just...odd. It weakened the scenes considerably.
The main flaw in this episode however was somewhat poor characterization. First, Pike's conclusion that the alien megastructure was belligerent seemed very random and was transparently for story purposes to create a short-lived conflict. I came out of that scene thinking less of him, which shouldn't have happened. More fundamental though is the oddness of the sudden deep relationship between Burnham and Saru. We've had no evidence on camera they particularly liked one another. Their relationship on the Shenzhou was distant and prickly, and even though Saru came to forgive Michael, we didn't really see a budding friendship as we did with Tilly. I understand that for narrative purposes Saru had to be close to someone, and since he knew Burnham the longest (and she is the main character) it should have been her. But this relationship just seems...unearned. Which is a shame, because viewed in isolation, not knowing anything about the arc of Discovery as a whole, this character work comes off a lot better.
Mentioned that it said so somewhere in the episode? If so, I missed that. Because that was supposed to be her name before Tig requested that it be changed to Jett.
David Bowie is canon. I can't wait to read his Memory Alpha entry.
Because that's not outside. Those are panels or shades that appear to simulate natural light. They had them in the last episode too, seen with some kind of lowerable shade. If you mean the scene with Michael and Saru?
The pop culture references feel weird. The other shows didn’t really have them which made sense since it’s 400 years into our future.
Someday in the not to distant future, Kane's posts will be comprised of nothing but YouTube videos of others sharing his opinions.
Very likely.
Every other Trek would have done it too if they weren't too cheap to pay royalties. That's why everything was public domain classical.
They only avoided them because they lacked the budget to use anything outside public domain material, with very few exceptions.
Edit: ninja’d by seconds. Oh well.
This I've gotta see... 
They'll need to do a new video with footage added from "An Obol for Charon". When Saru loses his Ganglia, he goes from a "boy" to a "man". Boyz II Men.
They'll need to do a new video with footage added from "An Obol for Charon". When Saru loses his Ganglia, he goes from a "boy" to a "man". Boyz II Men.
The UT problem was one of the best things in Trek ever. The sphere and the solution around it was very interesting. I really liked the Saru/Burnham friendship here. The stuff between Reno/Stamets stuff was super fun. The Tilly stuff was probably my least favorite part of the episode but I get this funny feeling this is how we’re going to get Culber back, which could make it worth it. It was getting a little texhnobabblish for my taste for a bit there.
Oh and more Number One please.
7/10.
Oh and more Number One please.
7/10.
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