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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x05 - "Saints of Imperfection"

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well i'm pretty disturbed with Admiral Cornwall and starlet being OK with Nationbuilding, its bad enough we do it in our own reality
Nation building isn’t an inherently negative term.

I have to believe the writers know that Section 31 isn't supposed to be this visible, and that instead they're building up to something, perhaps something so terrible, that forces the organization to go underground and erase all record of their existence .
Well Michelle Yeoh said in an interview that Section 31 is unsanctioned and unofficial, yet this episode seems to suggest otherwise. It’s odd. Maybe it was just PR speak. Or maybe that happens later in the season and it wasn’t caught by whoever approves the interviews.

This episode was really bad. We're to believe people in the Star Trek universe have souls and Stamets plucked his lovers soul after death and it was given a new mushroom body in the mushroom universe? Dumb.

Also the aliens can make transporters and clone bodies in 60 seconds but cant deal with someone wearing bark? Also dumb.

This was less believable fantasy than anything in Star Wars.

Star Trek has done way worse.
 
'm talking about Starfleet records specifically not all manner of Federation-wide records. Sarek is an Ambassador of a sovereign government not a Starfleet officer. It seems more reasonable to me that Spock could withhold the details of his parentage or explicitly prevent it from from becoming public for obvious security reasons.
So Spock's Starfleet file wouldn't mention his father? A father who's an important Federation official?

Implicitly, yes I believe so. One of the major themes (if not the major one) around Spock's character from TOS onward is the duality between his emotional side and logical side. This is made even more relevant with the revelation that he is half-human. Given the ribbing he's always getting from McCoy and the fact that the emotion vs logic thing comes up so often it seems less plausible to me that such an thing as a human foster sister would not come up at some point within the scope of the stories that have been told.
They barely mention his human mother, why would they mention his foster sister?
Anyway I thought the subject at hand was Starfleet records not ribbing and repartee..
 
Look: part of the nature of long-running series is that backstories gets expanded and the past gets retconned a bit. The real reason for all these "But why didn't they mention that before?" queries is that "well, they hadn't invented that yet." Which is, honestly, just the nature of the beast.

I remember raising an eyebrow when the Cardassian War came out of nowhere in "The Wounded," but it was a great episode and the Cardassians proved to be a good addition to the franchise so I'm not going to worry overmuch about why we never heard of this war before, or why nobody mentioned Spock's telepathic abilities in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" or why they didn't use a shuttlecraft in "The Enemy Within," and so on.
 
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Didn't much care for this episode overall.

Pro
  • Section 31 (with the exception of Georgiou scenery chewing cheesiness)
Con
  • Voice-overs
  • SMG's library of exactly 3 facial expressions: Surprised, Happy, Sad
  • Everything about the mycelial network, including but not limited to:
    • Return of Culber
    • Mushroom creature's insta-bond with Tilly
 
So Spock's Starfleet file wouldn't mention his father?
Yeah -- this has always been a (very minor) problem I have with Journey to Babel.

The Babel conference is very important. Kirk is given the vital task by Star Fleet and the Federation of getting these important diplomats there. You'd think (a) that Star Fleet would know who Spock's father is, and (b) Let Kirk know, because the familial ties may prove to be something Kirk and the Federation could use to more effectively perform this vital task.

But like I said, it's such a minor point that I choose to tell myself "it's just a show and I should really just relax" rather than allowing it to affect my enjoyment of what is a fantastic episode.
 
So Spock's Starfleet file wouldn't mention his father? A father who's an important Federation official? They barely mention his human mother, why would they mention his foster sister?
\Anyway I thought the subject at hand was Starfleet records not ribbing and repartee..

I already covered why I believe it might be plausible for his parentage to not be part of Starfleet records.

You're clearly more interested in agitating than just having a discussion about the merits of certain elements of the story.
Kindly refrain from quoting me in the future and I shall return the favor.
 
Didn't much care for this episode overall.

Pro
  • Section 31 (with the exception of Georgiou scenery chewing cheesiness)
She's like Eartha Kitt's Catwoman. I half-expected her to purr every line or say "meow" in a catty way (although we did get the snake-like hiss, which was pretty much the same thing).

It worked for Eartha Kitt because of the campiness of TV's Batman. Discovery does not need as much camp.


EDIT TO REVISE:
Oops..."Kitt" has two Ts. I Fixed it above.
 
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TBH, I thought Michelle Yeoh was such an imposing presence in Crazy Rich Asians but find Eeeevil Georgiou so over the top and silly that I can't take her seriously. It seems like a waste of Yeoh's talent. I enjoyed seeing her chew the scenery at first, but now it's become dull and samey.
 
She's like Eartha Kit's Catwoman. I half-expected her to purr every line or say "meow" in a catty way (although we did get the snake-like hiss, which was pretty much the same thing).

It worked for Eartha Kit because of the campiness of TV's Batman. Discovery does not need as much camp.

That's a purrrrfect comparison (sorry couldn't resist :lol:)
 
I already covered why I believe it might be plausible for his parentage to not be part of Starfleet records.

You're clearly more interested in agitating than just having a discussion about the merits of certain elements of the story.
Kindly refrain from quoting me in the future and I shall return the favor.
If I missed that, I apologize.

Discussion is always my intent, never antagonizing. I'm at a loss as to how you got that impression.
 
OK just started watching so Section 31 is retcon as a legitimate intelligence division of Starfleet aka CIA, MI5 style since characters are banding the name around like its candy lol
 
So, as I said yesterday, I am sick, and decided to retire early rather than watch the episode feverish. I did watch it this morning, but I'm still a bit off (mainly a pretty bad sinus headache) which may have negatively impacted the viewing experience.

Anyway, I really didn't like this episode. Easily beats out Point of Light as the worst episode so far this season.

First I'll give the episode some credit. I thought it seemed on a macro level well put together. While other episodes this season had fancy camerawork, fast cuts, and other distractions, the production itself was much more straight ahead this time around. And the overall narrative structure of the episode was pretty coherent, with the A plot (Tilly lost in the sporeverse) and the B plot (Section 31 crap) relatively tightly put together.

But, when you zoom in past the 5,000 foot view, it had a lot of issues.

Let's start with the main plot of the episode - the search to find Tilly, which also results in the inexplicable discovery of Culber. I realize that Trek is full of dumb technobabble, but this episode took things waaay past my suspension of disbelief. I mean, I guess I'm glad we didn't find out that all souls of the dead resided in the mycelial network, that it was just a one-time thing with Culber. But it was very clearly some sort of awkward retcon. The dirty, shaggy, half-mad Culber we meet is nothing like the serene spore-ghost we saw in the first season. I also don't understand how if real atoms don't exist in the mycelial network that Tilly, Stamets, and Micheal managed to - you know - breathe. Because my disbelief was never suspended, I simply couldn't emotionally invest in the reunion of Stamets and Culber, even though I knew it was supposed to be a touching moment. I suppose it was a nice Trekkian touch to have the "monster" be Culber - who was just trying to defend himself - but too little time was spent on this.

Regarding the B plot - the introduction of Section 31 to the Discovery crew - there really wasn't a plot at all. I suppose it's setup for later in the season and might develop some sort of payoff. But basically we see that Michael still doesn't like Georgiou, that Pike doesn't trust Tyler, and that Pike and Leland had some sort of history together. The last point in particular confused me, because through most of the episode they seemed like old friends who went down different paths, but then Cornwell dressed both of them down and said they had to work together??? They already were working together!

There were also macro problems with the entire episode. The dialogue was very clunky, dumb-sounding, and (things like Georgiou DRAMA aside) seemed to just exist to plot the plot to tech the tech. And the episode was framed with Burnham monologues on either side! Honestly I think part of the reason why I disliked this episode so much was because it had so much content which reminded me of the aspects of Season 1 I really didn't like.
 
Deanna's secret dead sister, Kirk's previously unmentioned son, Tasha Yar's Romulan daughter . ...

I would (respectfully) argue that Sela shouldn't be in this list; her existence was a direct result of the choices Picard and Tasha made in Yesterday's Enterprise. It was an interesting use of time travel and its consequences.
 
OK just started watching so Section 31 is retcon as a legitimate intelligence division of Starfleet aka CIA, MI5 style since characters are banding the name around like its candy lol
It isn't a retcon, yet. We don't know how Section 31 operated in the 23rd century, since we've never seen them before in the 23rd century.

For all we know they'll be disavowed by the end of the series and become the even shadowy group seen in DS9.

Anyways they're not Starfleet intelligence, as Tyler already brought them up, saying they looked nothing like them. They're a separate group from them as well.
 
It isn't a retcon, yet. We don't know how Section 31 operated in the 23rd century, since we've never seen them before in the 23rd century.

For all we know they'll be disavowed by the end of the series and become the even shadowy group seen in DS9.
The were shadowy in ENT time just 100 years from the DISC period.
 
If I missed that, I apologize.
I am happy to accept it.
Discussion is always my intent, never antagonizing. I'm at a loss as to how you got that impression.
Nuance is often difficult to convey over a faceless text only medium . The reply just happened to strike me as repeating the point I had felt I just answered and not especially engaged in debating the merits (or lack thereof) of that answer.

If that wasn't your intent then I apologize for being too sensitive and making something out of it that was not in fact the case.
 
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