Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x09 - "Project Daedalus"

I really never would have predicted Control was going to be a major plot point. In fact, last week when everyone was chattering about it, I was rolling my eyes and thinking how unimportant it all was compared to the story we'd seen.


Wrong again, Vger23. Wrong again.

 

I think I have a high bar for tears. That ending clearly wants me to feel something, and I didn't. There were several similar instances in season one, where I thought the show was trying hard for a particular emotional response and didn't get there. Thankfully, season two has been much better in this regard, so I was disappointed to see it re-occur here.

I'm glad it worked for you, though.

 

Airiam is nowhere near as sophisticated as an android and probably not even most Borg. She may come off to some fans as a 23rd century Data but at most she's a cybernetically-augmented human with artificially-enhanced abilities. That's a far cry from a Soong-type android of a century later.

 

So Control is going to wipe out allsentient life, all because of Michael? It must really hate her.

 

The more I've seen of Detmer, the more I like her. I'd love a Star Trek novel or comics from her POV.

Kes leaving the cast was a major change. She didn't exactly die, but it was dramatic.

He's so good it's scary, isn't he? He's doing his own thing and my brain completely buys it as Spock.

I do think some true Spock acolytes will critique how angry he was in this episode. But in TOS, he got terse and snippy when he had the conn during terse situations, especially when/if Kirk was in danger.

 

As much as I like Zachary Quinto's Spock from the Kelvin Timeline he has definitely been eclipsed by Ethan Peck's take on the character.

 

It looked like one of the neverending pharmaceutical commercals to me. I was walking away to grab a snack expecting to hear "Ask Your Doctor About Airiamol" or something before we realized it was still on.

 

I like Tilly too, when done well, but her interaction with Cornwell was pretty unbearable. That was another thing that reminded me of season one. I was glad she got some better scenes later on.

 

Personally, I thought it was a bit worse than last week. I rated it an eight.

Viewed in isolation, the episode had a lot of good elements. The dialogue in the last episode seemed like it went up around 15 IQ points, and it's continued here. I liked the little touch where Detmer essentially lampshaded to Airiam that they were secondary characters (the whole "going on an away mission" thing - considering Airiam was actually fairly high ranking it made little sense in universe, but made sense to us as viewers. The acting was for the most part great too (I never really liked Cornwell that much in the first season, but this one sold me on her as a character). Frakes did a good job with direction as well, although there were admittedly a few shots (the pan when Cornwell came out of the shuttle, and some of the slow-motion fight stuff) which was too stylized.

That said, as with others, I felt like the episode lost a lot of potential impact because Airiam was not well developed as a character. Hell, she wasn't even a character. In the first season, she was an extra. This season, she got a few more lines in earlier episodes, but wasn't even as developed as Detmer and Owo. It felt kinda like when Voyager would introduce a special guest character and then kill them off at the episode's end - which is not a good thing. Actually, it's a bit more extreme, because the episode was consciously framed largely from the POV of Airiam. Again, if they built her up as a character for the last season and a half, it would have been awesome. But I didn't get the feels with the emotional response to her death at the end. I just didn't.

A more minor quibble is the sudden veer into the plot - Cornwell's shuttle shows up, and she gives an infodump - was just a bit too much for me to suspend disbelief. Maybe I've gotten used to serialized drama, but I expected a tiny bit more connective plot tissue here. Some sort of indication as to what life on the run has been like for Discovery. We didn't get that.

The episode also felt curiously half-finished. Don't they still have to get in and disable/reset Control? Are they waiting till next episode? Will it happen off camera?

 

If you experience a four-part story arc please consult your script doctor.

 

I gave it an 8. It was tense at the right moments, had some great personal character scenes, and was very linear and not hyperactive. I was fortunate to resonate emotionally with Airiam's death, but I agree it could have been even better earned. Michael and Spock playing chess was great. I love this Ethan Peck guy..and he has very good chemistry with SMG. I liked the further tying-in of the sphere knowledge to the main plot. The almost used the spore drive yet again. It advanced the arc sufficiently without needing to cram 15 plots and a bunch of exposition into 50 min.

Good episode, obviously not nearly as good as last week, but then again, not much is.

 

Heh... in saying that, she pretty much, at the same time, told the Disco crew that they suck. Pretty strange thing to say about a ship with the unique ability to travel anywhere in the universe instantaneously that was ostensibly the tip of the spear during the Klingon War. Enterprise couldn’t do that.

 

I didn't expect Ariam to be killed off. In Season 1, I expected anyone who wasn't Burnham could die, unless they had to survive to TOS. In Season 2, I haven't felt that way at all. So killing her off was more of a surprise.

 

Imagine if it had been someone like a Tilly in that booth. Instead, the big, dramatic ending hangs on what is basically a redshirt death.

 

This one's not gonna reach 64 pages right away... still, this was a nice episode.
Also didn't expect Ariam to get killed off. Most of her files are in the computer.
Hopefully we'll see what her next iteration becomes.

 

It ain’t Berman either.

 

I don't want them to kill off Tilly.

Ariam was someone who we see all the time, who was suddenly killed off. If someone who I see all the time suddenly dies, I'd feel something for it, even if we weren't really friends and all we ever did was say "hi" in passing. I know because it's happened to me IRL. In the same sentiment: Ariam wasn't a main cast member, but she wasn't a stranger/redshirt either.

 

That really took me out of the scene. Just a moment before, Pike is making sure the visuals work and checks in with everyone. As soon as the action starts, though, all that is forgotten. (Oh, and the transporter. The ship had a lock on everyone just in case … something like this happened.)

Yet, when the airlock opened, I couldn’t figure out how. It seemed like Burnham did it unconsciously or something.

And then there’s Nhan. I’d forgotten her—apparently just like everyone on Discovery—and so that was a real surprise.

So, I guess the scene worked out the way it was supposed to.

 

I mean, fundamentally the emotional beats in this have the same issue as the Burnham/Saru relationship in An Obol for Charon. They're just not earned. With a bit more planning - you know, serialization - they could have laid the groundwork for this episode working better by showing Airiam socializing with the rest of the crew and the like. But they didn't, which makes it seem like Michelle Paradise essentially pulled the story out of a hat.

 

That's the sort of character risk I do want, though. It's feeling like we're in the old Trek status quo, where the main characters are never really in danger.