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

And then Control's aboard the ship again. Discovery isn't pretending to be 1990 Trek like The Orville is. Control has access to wifi.

 

Agreed. He's still bothered by Burnham's "half-breed" comment from childhood, as well as all his other youthful baggage. He's still wrestling with extreme emotional demons and his post-mindmeld trauma with the RA. By TFF, and likely long before, he's come to terms with those demons (unbeknownst to Sybok who tried to exploit them), but at this point, Spock has about 30 years of evolving to do before getting to that point. For Peck to play Spock as we know him eventually to become in a prequel set far in the past would be the height of stupidity. They're very much doing this correctly.

 

Or alternatively, beam her into space, either way it could've been useful. (Though maybe not the best for dramatic storytelling...)

 

Probably would have taken more time than that to lock on given the defenses the station has against sensors and such.

 

Some are more extreme than others.

 

Long-term double agent. But now that it has been revealed that the real Admiral Patar is dead, I wonder if she really was a logic extremist.

 

It was pretty common in old school episodic TV. How many time did we meet a pal of Hoss or Little Joe who seemed to know them quite well, but would wind up dead by the episodes end? The only difference here is that we saw the "cowboy" on the "Ponderosa" in previous episodes.

 

I'm guessing they are drawing parallels to fundamentalist religion or extreme right/left-wing politics - not all fundamentalists conduct terror attacks, so the Federation cannot make the viewpoints themselves illegal. It does seem odd that someone so hidebound and bigoted would progress far within Starfleet, though, unless S31 were pulling strings for her.

 

This is what I thought too, like, you can't discriminate against her just because of her beliefs, and those beliefs don't make her a terrorist. I guess it's one thing to not want humans in your culture, and another thing that your culture is part of an intergalactic community. But yeah, you would think someone like that wouldn't necessarily move up well in Starfleet. Then again, Admiral Satie was well respected and it took a retired version of her for Starfleet to realize she was a racist old biddy.

 

A line about Control preventing a transporter lock might have worked. But who cares?

Another strong episode, especially for Airiam. It's an interesting mirror for Pike, given what we know happens to him. If they could RoboCop Airiam, why does Pike get the old beep-beep bath chair? Maybe cybernetics were banned after this incident...

Loved the memory delete scene at the start. It was very Black Mirror, and instantly told you everything about the character. A shame it's taken this long, and now she's gone. Or is she?

Great that Nhan got a bit more to do, even if her obvious suspicion of Airiam didn't quite get a pay-off. She clocked something was wierd but didn't get to expose her. Ok, airlocking Airiam is a kind of pay-off, but the "I'll take care of her, captain" bit suggested she had worked out what was going on.

More great visual effects, as ever. I like that Discovery turns gracefully rather than zipping around like a Star Wars fighter, as befits a big ship.

What was that at the end, it's all Michael's fault?

 

I dunno. I mean the title "logic extremist" certainly sounds like something that Humans or other Vulcans use to ascribe the group, and not a self-appellation. A good Vulcan would say something like "there is nothing extreme about the relentless pursuit of logic."

I do have to say the logic extremists, while extreme, have not seemed extremely logical to date. Really it just seems to be they have a different code of ethics underlying their logic which doesn't take (among other things) IDIC to heart.

 

It's not a "more generic" version of Spock at all, it's the younger version of Spock from TOS - "The Cage"/"The Menagerie" flashback scenes.

the only other time we saw a 'young Spock' in the PU was from TAS - "Yesteryear" and hell even it that episode Spock admits to the Vulcan healer that yes, he played practical jokes on people in the past. It's pretty clear that when he was younger Spock did embrace his Human side more than he does later in life when he finally decided he was going to embrace the logic of his Vulcan side; and the Vulcan doctrine of suppressing and controlling one's emotions.

Prior to the stuff we're now seeing in Discovery, most fans assumed it was a simple choice he ultimately made - but, as we're seeing it wasn't so simple; it was a journey he had with many bumps and experiences along the way. If anything it explains the 'Spock' we see in "The Cage" and shows how (over the 12 years in between those events, and the events in TOS - "The Menagerie"); he became the Mr. Spock we saw in the other 79 episodes of TOS and beyond.

 

I'm wondering if perhaps Control isn't the big bad that it seems to be at this point. Maybe future Control failed to save the Federation from destruction and sent the Squidbot back in time to provide it a boost so it could ensure that both itself and the Federation would be prepared for the attack and thwart it instead of turning itself into Skynet as everybody seems to think it is right now.

 

She was in a vacuum at the end of the episode as well...
What? Too soon?

 

That's easy enough to explain. As with almost any ideology or movement, you're going to have your radical militants and your more mainstream advocates, who hold the same views but espouse them in more establishment ways: politics, books, speeches, etc.

It was briefly startling because, up to now, we've only heard about the "logic extremists" in the context of terrorism, but, when you stop and think about it, I have no trouble accepting that not all "logic extremists" are terrorists, because that's how things work in real-life. Not every believer of any cause is a bomb-throwing terrorist.

 

But the truth is: Season 1 WAS an attempt at "Game of Thrones in Spaaace!". And that aspect of the show backfired horribly. And now, since they have purged this aspect for season 2 - all the precious "nuances and subtleteys" you think people didn't noitice - work so much, much more better when they're embetted in their own interpretation instead of a shallow copy of something popular. It's not that people didn't notice these -- it's just that they were obviously over-shadowed by the larger identity of what the show was at the time (or was trying to ape).

In a same way: I really wanna' smack the Sheldon/Sherlock right out of Peck-Spock!
Because once that larger part is gone - I think the nuanced traits Peck brings to the character - could quite honestly work. That sadly doesn't change the fact that the main traits of this character, right now, are a horrible meme that overshadows the subtle nuances everyone brings to the table.

 

Yeah, "logic extremist" could just mean she thinks logic is the best way to run one's own life and society.

Plus it was a red herring anyway, as Control had done in the Admiral and was using freaky holographic tech to bamboozle Starfleet. Child's play for the TNG era, but something notable here.

 

Awesome doubling down dude.

PS. Some of us actually have access to our long term memories and can do more with our faculties than just compare things to the latest pop culture sensations.

 

I thought that about Pike, too. The difference may be that Ariam was severely injured in a shuttle accident and Pike was a victim of radiation that did irreparable damage.

The real question is, how common was Ariam's treatment after her accident? Accidents happen, as they say. Are there others like her? It may have been experimental from the beginning. Further, there would be ethical issues. Did they get her permission to do what they did? Is someone automatically given the type of life they gave her if needed, or do they get to refuse it?

Another question would be why the treatment wouldn't make the person look a bit more cosmetically human (or whatever species the person was). That is, more like they once were.

 

I hope Detmer gets an episode with a bigger focus on her soon. Owo got the episode where they go down to the colony, and now Ariam got this one, so of our bigger supporting characters that just leaves Detmer to get her own episode.