With respect to your well-written analysis Star Trek has sailed on this issue since at least VOY.
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x05 - "Saints of Imperfection"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
^^^
This ain't new to Trek. See TOS S2 - "Return To Tomorrow"<--- And that was LONG before Vulcan 'Katra's were introduced in STIII:TSFS.
Weighing in here before reading the thread because I've just (finally) seen this episode, and I wanted to get some thoughts out before getting bogged down in other comments. Take it for whatever it's worth...
Let's stipulate: First, I do not like the idea, at all, of Section 31 being an official branch of Starfleet Intelligence, engaging in "black ops" yet known and sanctioned by other officers and by Federation officials. (Neither the Federation nor any government that claims to be grounded in ethical principles should countenance such things.) Second, I think whoever amongst the DSC PTB decided that Cannibal Space Nazi MU!Georgiou is a character worth keeping around, rather than sweeping under the thickest rug available, is someone with seriously flawed creative sensibilities. And third, the notion of actually creating a new series based around these characters and concepts, one in which they will almost inevitably wind up being presented as the protagonists they self-servingly imagine themselves to be, continues to strike me as an absolutely atrocious idea.
Given all of that, however... those decisions were distinct from this episode qua episode, and insofar as working within those constraints is part of what the episode had to do, it did a very good job of it. Even in relation to those constraints: e.g., when Leland pompously said to Pike "We do what we do so you can do what you do," I all but wanted to jump up and scream "fuck you!" at the screen, which is of course exactly the audience reaction you want to elicit for a smarmy self-righteous villain. And I like the way that Michael has come to her senses since last season and realizes (and makes clear) that under no circumstances whatsoever should she trust MU!Georgiou.
All things considered, I think the episode was suspenseful, well imagined, well acted, and (especially) well written. Kirsten Beyer clearly has a knack (in contrast to some writers for this show) for crafting dialogue that efficiently conveys narrative information without dropping expository anvils, that feels genuinely emotional without indulging in bathos, and (most importantly) that sounds like real people communicating rather than being pointlessly opaque and enigmatic.
Not that there weren't a few story hiccups. For instance, it's never explained why an organization like S31 would be assigned to track an apparently run-of-the-mill murder suspect in the first place (before the new information Cornwell delivers at the end)... nor does it make any sense that S31 would assign Tyler of all people as "liaison" to Discovery knowing full well that there are multiple people aboard with whom he has, to put it mildly, a history of conflict (unless, of course, S31 was deliberately trying to monkey-wrench Pike's crew, but if so the motivation for that is also unexplained).
Still and all, the flaws were minor enough to overlook in the face of a taut and satisfying story... especially one that ties off the lingering "mycelial network" story threads, brings Tilly back to "normal," and rectifies the mistake of killing off Culber, and does it all with a sense of panache. Overall I'd say it was excellent, and I hope the rest of the season can keep up this standard.
Let's stipulate: First, I do not like the idea, at all, of Section 31 being an official branch of Starfleet Intelligence, engaging in "black ops" yet known and sanctioned by other officers and by Federation officials. (Neither the Federation nor any government that claims to be grounded in ethical principles should countenance such things.) Second, I think whoever amongst the DSC PTB decided that Cannibal Space Nazi MU!Georgiou is a character worth keeping around, rather than sweeping under the thickest rug available, is someone with seriously flawed creative sensibilities. And third, the notion of actually creating a new series based around these characters and concepts, one in which they will almost inevitably wind up being presented as the protagonists they self-servingly imagine themselves to be, continues to strike me as an absolutely atrocious idea.
Given all of that, however... those decisions were distinct from this episode qua episode, and insofar as working within those constraints is part of what the episode had to do, it did a very good job of it. Even in relation to those constraints: e.g., when Leland pompously said to Pike "We do what we do so you can do what you do," I all but wanted to jump up and scream "fuck you!" at the screen, which is of course exactly the audience reaction you want to elicit for a smarmy self-righteous villain. And I like the way that Michael has come to her senses since last season and realizes (and makes clear) that under no circumstances whatsoever should she trust MU!Georgiou.
All things considered, I think the episode was suspenseful, well imagined, well acted, and (especially) well written. Kirsten Beyer clearly has a knack (in contrast to some writers for this show) for crafting dialogue that efficiently conveys narrative information without dropping expository anvils, that feels genuinely emotional without indulging in bathos, and (most importantly) that sounds like real people communicating rather than being pointlessly opaque and enigmatic.
Not that there weren't a few story hiccups. For instance, it's never explained why an organization like S31 would be assigned to track an apparently run-of-the-mill murder suspect in the first place (before the new information Cornwell delivers at the end)... nor does it make any sense that S31 would assign Tyler of all people as "liaison" to Discovery knowing full well that there are multiple people aboard with whom he has, to put it mildly, a history of conflict (unless, of course, S31 was deliberately trying to monkey-wrench Pike's crew, but if so the motivation for that is also unexplained).
Still and all, the flaws were minor enough to overlook in the face of a taut and satisfying story... especially one that ties off the lingering "mycelial network" story threads, brings Tilly back to "normal," and rectifies the mistake of killing off Culber, and does it all with a sense of panache. Overall I'd say it was excellent, and I hope the rest of the season can keep up this standard.
Last edited:
I like what you posted and agree with much of it and I understand your concerns about Georgiou and Section 31. However I am willing to give Discovery and any spinoff time to tell us how Section 31 gets suppressed (but not completely killed off) in a power struggle.
You note you haven't yet been able to read the whole thread. I can assure you the Section 31 issue has been vigorously examined and debated.
With respect as I like what you have written.
Last edited:
Responses to a few pages' worth of other comments!...
Black ops is certainly a valid descriptor for what we've seen S31 do before, but think about what the term means. It denotes basically two things. First, activities that are covert — that is to say, deniable, in the sense that they can't be attributed to those responsible. Second, activities that are illegal, and as such can't be officially sanctioned. In either case, it makes zero sense to say "and here's our special branch of Starfleet that does the black ops, complete with their own identifying badges!"
(For a real-world analog, consider the CIA's "family jewels" that were declassified a few years back... a long list of illicit activities carried out from the '50s through the '70s that included illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation. These ops were obviously "black" in both senses, and hence were strenuously denied by the CIA at the time it was doing them.)
I don't mind it nearly so much as last season. It seems clear enough that whatever the eventual reveal about the Red Dots, their main purpose is just as a McGuffin, a plot device to motivate a "quest" story and keep the characters moving through a variety of other situations. And as such, it works pretty well. By way of contrast, both the presentation of the Klingon War and the very nature of such a conflict meant that it was The Most Important Thing going on last season, so the fact that it was really only dealt with tangentially felt like a frustrating bait-and-switch.
The Doctor always manages to regenerate, don'cha know?
It's hard for me to believe you're both so down on Beyer's dialogue! Just have to chalk it up as a YMMV sort of thing, I guess, because I thought it was some of the best dialogue of the season (and arguably the entire show) so far. Just think about the clever interrogatory one-upsmanship in the initial exchange between Pike and Georgiou... or the direct and honest discussion between Pike and Burnham after she first glimpsed Tyler... or the tense repartee between Pike and Leland... or the way Tilly and May, and then later both of them plus Burnham and Stamets, all quickly got past their emotional reactions to one another and got on with the business of sharing important information. Time and again it reminded me of how people actually talk, when they're not trying to be all Dramatic and Mysterious (as is far too often the case on this show... and plenty of other shows, to be fair).
Yeah, that aspect was annoying and unnecessary. (And the fact that it was so wishy-washy... "I don't believe in any sort of higher power guiding us... but gosh, what if there were one?" just made it feel extra pointless.)
Have to agree to disagree there. Her voice is so monotonous that I almost instantly forget much of what she says. It might as well be the dictionary.
Indeed (except that I'd drop the word "virtually"). Especially if they knew in advance that she (not he) was the character they'd be keeping around, it makes no sense at all. They made her so irredeemably awful that Lorca's insurgency against her frankly seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing, which made his last-minute heel turn seem all the more pointless.
This, though, I disagree about. As just mentioned, if I had to describe her in one word, it would be "irredeemable." Her favorite hobbies include torture, murder, slavery, cannibalism, and let's not forget genocide. This is not a person with a secret "reasonable" side yearning to get out. Trying to reverse-engineer her into some sort of redemption arc would be a seriously pointless waste of narrative resources (along the lines of George Lucas's misbegotten efforts with Darth Vader in the SW prequels).
Maybe it can, but IMHO Quark's a bad example to use. To my mind he was the single most time-wasting, tonally disruptive thing about DS9. (Well, okay, tied with Bajoran religion for that spot, at least.)
FWIW, I am a TOS fan first, last, and always, hands down! I very much prefer the TOS take on the Prime Directive, for instance, over TNG's intransigent and overbroad interpretation of it. Nonetheless, my preferences in this regard do not extend to regarding the actions of S31 as "necessary" in any form. Long story short, to the extent the organization does things Jim Kirk would not do or approve of, that's the extent to which I dislike it.
Good point. It did seem awfully literal, as opposed to just a mental "manifestation" of things for human benefit.
This doesn't both me so much. My take on it is that the spores have little or no experience dealing with beings who possess individual bodies and consciousnesses. Most of what they do — including building a body for the new mind that popped up, and then treating it like an invading pathogen — they do purely out of instinct, or (at most) acting like a primitive hive mind. The whole "May" experiment is very much a trial-and-error thing, and at that the only reason it worked is that they were able to model it around memories of a specific person plucked from Tilly's consciousness.
This also doesn't bother me. He's one of the most decorated captains in Starfleet, after all, and has spent the last seven years commanding one of its most prominent starships. It stands to reason that he'd have a wide range of connections. (Kirk certainly did, at an even earlier point in his career... he kept running into old friends and acquaintances in episode after episode.)
I could pretty much go along with what you say here if they were merely presenting Leland's outfit as "Starfleet intelligence"... without the Section 31 aspect and the specific reference to "black ops." But they're not.
Black ops is certainly a valid descriptor for what we've seen S31 do before, but think about what the term means. It denotes basically two things. First, activities that are covert — that is to say, deniable, in the sense that they can't be attributed to those responsible. Second, activities that are illegal, and as such can't be officially sanctioned. In either case, it makes zero sense to say "and here's our special branch of Starfleet that does the black ops, complete with their own identifying badges!"
(For a real-world analog, consider the CIA's "family jewels" that were declassified a few years back... a long list of illicit activities carried out from the '50s through the '70s that included illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation. These ops were obviously "black" in both senses, and hence were strenuously denied by the CIA at the time it was doing them.)
Last edited:
She really hates Pike - both the character and the actor - for some reason.
Yes totally agree with this.
Getting tired of the Burnham voiceovers. Why can't she just dictate a personal log and be done with it? 
For that matter, why doesn't anyone on this show do that? All previous Trek captains did. Did Lorca even do one last season?
For that matter, why doesn't anyone on this show do that? All previous Trek captains did. Did Lorca even do one last season?
What's the difference? Either way she would be doing the voiceover.
So you have problems with a cannibal space nazi being presented as a protagonist today. Did you have problems with an amoral cannibal space communist twenty years ago being made a lead on Voyager?
As for the ep not explaining everything to you, again, Discovery's seasons are single stories, not a series of distinct episodes and by now everybody knows this by now, like chapters in a book. Did you used to get upset when everything wasn't revealed after the first 15 minutes of one of the serial eps in the old days? When you read a novel do you expect to be given all the answers a quarter of the way through? Yeah, i understand that there's a whole generation of viewers who were spoon fed everything they needed to know, but I do wonder how many seasons of a Star Trek show not doing this its going to take before people actually accept that they are going to have to figure some things out for themselves..
And you annoyed about Star Fleet officers involved in deniable missions? You mean like what happened in The Enterprise Incident and Chain of Command?
Honestly, it makes perfects sense to narratively have Section 31 involved because we get to see the conflict between upright Starfleet and not-so-upright Starfleet which Star Trek has been doing since day one. Its a classic conflict that the series has been famous for. How does that line go?" Oh yes. "In my experience evil usually wins if Good isn't very very careful." I think it's rather compelling when Good isn't granted a cakewalk, how about you?
Last edited:
Getting tired of the Burnham voiceovers. Why can't she just dictate a personal log and be done with it?
For that matter, why doesn't anyone on this show do that? All previous Trek captains did. Did Lorca even do one last season?
It probably is her personal log. And since she's the lead in the show that's the one we get to hear. Would it make you feel better if she added a stardate to it? Or do you just hate the sound of Burnham's voice?
Last edited:
Worked as a decent sum up for me. Of course I was able to follow what was going on in the episode from beginning to end, so perhaps having that as a benefit helped I suppose.
I've asked this question elsewhere but I am genuinely curious to your reaction-is Vader redeemable? If so, why is he and not MU Georgiou? Even before the PT Lucas had asserted that "Return of the Jedi" referred to Anakin, not Luke.
Perhaps it would be preferable if Georgiou goes toe to toe with whatever evil force is about to show itself and is killed in the process. Perhaps then she will move closer to "redeemable?"
For that matter, and actually in-Trek, is Seven of Nine redeemable?
Last edited:
No.
Since she was abducted as a child and had no real control over her actions, I would say yes she is redeemable.
The end of "Return of the Jedi" must be very interesting for you.
What about when she returned to the collective?
Last edited:
Its clear that some people mistake the term redeemable with reprogrammable. It kind of interesting that Star Trek's Utopia appears to be viewed by some as a world of where there are no second chances and no actual possibility of real redemption allowable not to mention any possibility of forgiveness for past deeds that contradict this Utopias ideals. Where exactly is the Goodness in that?
Last edited:
You'd think an adult would be more "redeemable" after being a Borg. They would have more of their own memories and previous behavior to draw on.
He certainly suggests that Picard may not be redeemable under those qualifications.
Similar threads
- Poll
- Poll
- Poll
