Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x08 - "If Memory Serves"

I'd call the episode the show's best moment so far. I do like the series more than most of the others but that's because I tend to think of them by how well I liked the crews/actors. Disc and Enterprise are my favorites far above the others except for TOS which I couldn't honestly say whether that's just nostalgia or not.

 

Its 3rd on my list after Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad and Calypso. Certainly best of this season so far, IMO.

 

As long as the show doesn't pull a Precious Cargo on me, we're good.

 

Pre-determinism. Spock new they would help because he was experiencing time out of sync and new they already had/would help him.

 

Not for me. I thought it was a good episode, but nothing near Trek's finest hours. Not even sure I would rank it as above "All Our Yesterdays". Of course, YMMV.

 

What about A Night In Sickbay?

 

I'd still take that over Princess Cardboard, which is saying something. But shhhhh! Let's not curse either into existence!

 

I actually enjoy watching A Night in Sickbay even though it's terrible.

 

I just feel sorry for poor Archer, who's sleep-deprived and gets manipulated into mumbling embarrassing, juvenile bullshit. But the episode is miles better than Precious Cargo.

I don't think the worst of DISCO will ever come close to being that bad (and this is coming from a die-hard ENT defender).

 

Well, you *are* scrutinizing those aspects, which is totally fine!

I actually had trouble buying into the rift between them based on what was shown when I first watched it. However, after a rewatch, I realized there were other reasons for the rift which I could buy into. YMMV. The scrutiny helped me understand it better.

 

It finally happened. Jammer gave a four-star review to an episode of Discovery. His equivalent of a 10. There were a few close-but-no-cigars before, but "If Memory Serves" is the one that finally broke through.

 

Finally caught up on the thread!

Yes, I felt it was the kid equivalent of that moment in ST09, but worse. It's one thing to lose your logic and beat up some smug guy you don't really like, but if you're a little kid and your own big sister uses a racial slur against you? Even if you understand it later, you'd still resent it. I don't care how logical you were.

Perhaps it's because I'm in the same demographic as the actress playing Spock's big sister that I see it that way. I mean, I tried to think of having an elder brother who was from the majority racial/ethnic group trying to protect me by using a particular word that I despise and have never used (some say that rappers and others have "reclaimed" it -- I never bought it, but it's an internal matter).

I don't think I could ever forgive the person who'd used the slur, although I'd accept an apology and perhaps could be cool and cordial toward them. I would never consider them family again.

I've read some saying that they called their siblings worse, and -- no, not really. And actually, no, people aren't fine, even if they say they are and it's no big deal. Maybe those who are minimizing what it means to be called a racial slur are not thinking it through. And that's not because you're terrible people, it's just that as humans, we tend to relate to things that affect us more.

There is a reason why Leonard Nimoy received that famous letter from a biracial viewer in the 1960s. From his reply, you can tell he got it. I'd hope fans would, too.

I'm glad that DSC had more sense than to Game of Thrones their plot. It would have done a disservice to both characters. I really enjoyed the sibling dynamics here. In a lot of modern fiction, we get romance, bromance, or friendship, and the occasional parent-child storyline, but there aren't always siblings around. I am enjoying this more than I thought I would.

Of course. That's par the course for women leads, and especially for Black women leads of genre shows. We saw the same thing with Sleepy Hollow a few years back.

I will say that I initially really disliked the decision to tie Burnham into the Sarek-Grayson family. I thought it was so silly and unnecessary. After all, it's been 25 years since Sisko and he certainly wasn't tied to existing characters. He had his own family of origin, nuclear-ish family, and chosen family. Ben was well developed without leaning on existing canon. As a lifelong fan of SFF who's also Black, seeing Ben Sisko, Jake, Jen and Cassidy -- and let's not forget his Dad in New Orleans -- was everything when I was younger.

So I confess that I was annoyed by the whole "Michael Burnham is Spock's foster sister" business at first, and was only partially convinced last season. There's also the sticky issue of transracial adoption, which I'm agnostic about, and only partially applies in this case because the family's half-alien, but we still haven't seen Burnham's birth parents. That's sort of a trope among Black SF and genre fans. (We joke about it. A lot.)

Season 2 has convinced me. It works. I've thought everything they've done with the storyline has been incredible. The only thing better would have been to fold in Sybok, which is a hugely missed opportunity. You'd then have an eldest brother who's an unconventional thinking "black sheep" type, but 100% Vulcan, who's a stepson to Amanda. Foster/adopted middle sister Michael, all human, with huge survivor guilt issues. Then there's Spock, half-human and half-Vulcan, the youngest in the family.

For some fans, that'd be too soapy. But I like family stories. Some of us would be pleased. And they haven't overdone it; it's not in every episode. It works and I hope they don't drop it totally after this season.

You're a 22nd and 23rd century fan, like me! DS9 is my favorite among the series, but I definitely like TOS and the prequels. TNG and VOY are great, too, but I don't binge them in the same way.

See? It's not just us.

 

I rewatched this one recently, and found it decently entertaining.

 

To me, this was DSC's best episode, and it is DSC's best rationale for having this series directly linked to TOS. This episode single-handedly moved DSC up in the rankings of overall Star Trek series for me.

BOBW had a similar impact on my view of TNG at the time.

I said on this very thread on Thursday night, "I think DSC officially arrived tonight..." and I stand by that. It doesn't mean I expect this to happen every week now. Not at all. But, DSC has produced their first "classic" at this point, at least in my mind. Once you break that ice, it's easier to have more going forward. For example, I never felt that VOY or ENT ever had that breakthrough. As a result, while both are good series, they never caught fire for me.

 

You know, I never even thought that this might be sending the wrong message, à la season 1 Stranger Things, where we never see that one kid's parents (which they fixed in season 2 by giving him a pretty awesome family). But do you think DSC is handling the subject better, now?

 

I don't think it's wrong (even in a ST-forum) to criticize episodes and/or shows. So I'll keep doing it, even if others here keep gushing over this show.

* the big conflict moment...

... I get that Spock was insecure in his humanity or sense of self... whatever. But to play up something a girl in distress told him as some kind of damaging moment is plainly ridiculous. How many children were told cruel things by their siblings and didn't turn into psychiatric messes? The way Spock's turned into a walking psychiatric disaster with learning disabilities and "visions"... sorry, but what exactly is the purpose of this?

And sorry, Martin-Green doesn't display any sort of acting abilities... always the same expression, always the same tone of voice. Urgh. And I thought Jolene Blalock signified the epitome of poor-acting in ST with that teary voice and always rolling her eyes.

* Talos IV

... the death penalty is already in place by this point... and no one bats an eyelid? Discovery's just told to report to SB 11 for "disciplinary" action? Supposedly, the whole "The Cage" already took place (hated that "previously on"), so the danger posed by the Talosians is known. Or should we believe now that only after the events on Discovery any visits to Talos IV would be faced with capital punishment?

* the "jokes"

the beard joke... really? And that parting shot by illusion!Spock... what the hell was that? Both weren't funny, and the last one... are we meant to believe that the Talosians have any kind of humour?

* notdead!doctor and Tyler

Wow, who'd believe that Culber actually reacts like a human being in not being okay. I'd say right now that's the only natural reaction I've seen on this show so far. And all this incredulity and belief that everything's going back to normal now that he's back... exactly what kind of sedative/emotion-killing agent have the scriptwriters been consuming lately? What about psychological help? It's not as though Culber just woke up again, he spent quite some time in the network.

I'm not even going into the ludicrous depiction of S31.

Wouldn't have believed it with the first 2 episodes this season which I really enjoyed... but this season is actually worse than season 1 (due to Lorca who somehow held everything together). I guess I'll watch the remaining episodes out of some completist-neurosis... but past that...

 

That's the exact difference! NuKirk is kind of a jerk. You expect him to start trash-talking if he wants to pick a fight. Burnham isn't like that at all. So saying those horrible things, and having it come from Burnham, makes it a lot worse. Not just for Kid Spock but for some viewers as well. I like Burnham a lot more than NuKirk. So what Burham said to Spock was actually painful for me to watch. In a dramatic sense, not a "this writing is terrible!" sense. But, as has been said, she was just a kid and thinking of whatever she could think of to say to get Spock to not follow her.

 

The main problem with that episode for me is unless you want to attempt to use brain bleach, there's no recovering for the character of Jonathan Archer afterwards. No other series attempted to make the lead of the show an outright laughingstock in the same fashion. He's shown as irrational, petty, self-absorbed, and utterly unfit for command. If Enterprise pivoted into a comedy show, with Archer as the bumbling boss, perhaps it would have been more forgivable. But they followed it up in the third season with trying to make him into a believable leader, without bothering to really address his earlier (myriad) flaws.

 

Archer was upset and hadn't slept. He's flawed. That's a good thing imho.

 

Yeah, what Burnham said wouldn't hold a candle to some of the things my little sister told me over the years. And we still get along. Sometimes.

But anyway, Spock is half-Vulcan, possibly (but probably not) the first Vulcan-Human hybrid (discounting time travel and clones). He has a unique psychophysiology. She was his idol, it seems, and she hit him at just the right time and right place, developmentally, to cause permanent mental scarring. Which might be worse with his laser sharp Vulcan memory.

We don't know much about their relationship post-rift/post-save, but I imagine that it was what made Burnham turn to the super-stoicism we see on display in 2249. She became more Vulcan than Vulcan, and probably ignored Spock in pursuit of her studies.

Sarek's experiment to teach Spock empathy was a failure, and he (or, rather, Amanda) was now raising two children avoiding each other. Spock figured out, probably early on, what Burnham was trying to accomplish, but the later emotional distance was forever smashed and his innocence forever gone.

The learning disability predated the rift and may have been a result of his hybridization or just a natural human trait. He overcame it, but it ties *incredibly* well with the Alice in Wonderland references they've been sprinkling since Season 1.

This is demonstrably false, but I will agree that Vulcanesque acting is the toughest gig. You have to show emotion, but not. You have to imply some sort of passionate core under an icy demeanor.

Nimoy didn't always live up to these standards, but he's half-human and gets a pass as the metric ideal. SMG should get something of a pass as someone from an emotionless background trying to regain her humanity, but people still find fault on both fronts.

A purely emotionless Vulcan is boring, and I don't envy the actors, like Frain or Blalock or Russ, trying to pull it off.

I think that's where they're going with it. That Section 31 advises for a death penalty, possibly because the Talosians "forced" a highly decorated Captain in command of a highly decorated crew (they're all Medal of Honor winners) into going rogue. There will be a cover-up afoot, and Talos IV is going to be the patsy.

It's hard to tell whose idea was the joke. Talosians are masters of illusion, so of course they can tell a joke, or pry into someone's mind for the right joke, if the situation calls for it.

Or Vina may have come up with the joke. Or Burnham if she scripted the encounter. Or, dare I say it, Spock may have naturally performed the Gracie Allen joke. I seem to recall him joking around every week on TOS in a similar manner.

He probably shouldn't be heading back to work anytime soon. In fact, he shouldn't be on that ship. He and Stamets should've been dropped off at the nearest Starbase. Although, I guess Stamets is mission-critical so they may have overlooked protocol to not have Stamets leave.

I think Pike is the glue to this season, much as Lorca was the glue for last season. The show is a little over-reliant on their Captains, which is interesting, as it was something they were trying to avoid.