Responses!
I'd love to see some whacky sci if twist that says something like the quantum resonance unique to the Mirror Universe affects humans over time and makes them have all the negative traits you see there and, once removed from that setting, you start to be influenced by THIS universe's quantum resonance and lose those traits.
I'd love to see Georgeau start to gravitate back to the original character, with a little vampy mischief still intact.
Wow, I would totally hate that. Treating "evil" and "good" as functions of the cosmos, rather than as functions of actual human decisions, seems excessively simplistic, to a degree that would really undermine morally complex storytelling.
Leland's eye + Control + time travel = completely unnecessary Borg origin story.
That really would be needless, since the Borg have fuck-all to do with not just this show, but this entire
era of Trek. (Plus, they already have a dramatically compelling origin in the Litverse... and while the show of course isn't bound to adhere to that, I'd like to think the writers wouldn't deliberately go out of their way to contradict it.)
I thought the same thing, but there's no reason for the crew to assume that. From their point of view, three of the four visitations (or was it two of three? I don't recall how many times it's shown up) revolve around Michael and the other one doesn't. That's a hell of an assumption to risk Michael's life on. Especially since Spock didn't even mention New Eden, and presented his hypothesis as though it accounted for all of the sightings.
Yep. For that matter, Spock's most recent
personal sighting of the RA, the one that literally set the whole uber-plot in motion, also didn't involve Michael at all.
GREAT
* Oh the funeral was so well done, and who knew Saru could sing? Beautiful.
* Mirror Universe Pansexuals represent! That whole uncomfortable scene between Stamets, Culber, Tilly, and Georgiou was perfectly executed, IMO.
* Tilly, as always, especially the conference interruption scene. I mean, she's right, the doors just open, there's no knocking. Also, that revelation that it was Michael was not surprising (I think many of us figured as much), but she delivered it well.
* Finding out Michael's parents were a part of Section 31 would have ended up in the "meh" or "blergh" category, but Michael punched Leland in the face twice, so that gets a "great" from me.
* Spock and Michael's heart to heart in the gym. Finally we get to see them reconcile, and none too soon because...
* Hot damn that was a gutsy move! Using Michael as bait?
* Georgiou and Michael: when Phillipa touches Michael on the shoulder, and Michael puts her own hand on Georgiou's, that got to me. I adore Michelle Yeoh, and she's the only reason why I haven't entirely tanked Section 31, because she is just that damn awesome and holds it together all by herself.
* Leland getting Mission Impossibled. It wasn't a surprise for me, but only because I had a feeling he was going to get an impromptu eye exam. That was in bad taste, but I do not apologize.
* So we find out the Red Angel is Michael's MOM?! Didn't see it coming! Now I can't wait to see what's next!
Wow, I guess this is what makes for horse races... because literally almost everything you mention there (except for the one item I bolded) would fall in the "BLERGH" category for me. It just didn't work for me. Scene after scene kept yanking me out of the episode.
At first glance, I thought it was Georgiou...Prime.
For a half second I though it was SMG in "old age" make up.
Yeah, both reactions are understandable. For obvious reasons, nobody knew who they were looking at until Burnham conveniently filled us in. Which, by my lights, makes for a pretty underwhelming "reveal" moment.
Dissapointed:
- That there is such a thing as a 'Time Crystal' or that Section 31 isn't itself horrified that there must be some races out there with (and using) Time Travel tech. Hell, the Time manipulation tech Harry Mudd was able to get and use in that regard in ST: D's S1 "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad" should have BOTH the Feds and Klingons crapping their pants. I guess I just don't like it's a McGuffin that they can't produce themselves and hell that there's a 'Black Market' wityh the tech readily available.
Yes, absolutely. Building this story on a contrivance that undermines so much of the rest of Trek is not a good idea.
- That they were so certain this would work to 'draw' the Red Angel out; as if it were Michael, one would think 'Future Michael' would have remembered this particular incident and found a way around it; since again as they said, the Red Angel didn't appear in every instance.
Yeah, that seems eminently logical to me, too.
- That we again have an 'Evil A.I." infiltration that got past everyone a second time.
Yeah. Not dramatically compelling enough if it's just a future problem, I suppose? But really, you'd think it would've been simpler just to say that it had already escaped the confines of the S31 station before last episode (eminently reasonable, as there's no reason to suppose it started there anyway, and Federation communications tech would've made it easy), and thereby avoid the exposition about how they thought they'd (probably) destroyed it as well as the contrivance needed to bring it back again.
WTF:
- This is just a personal hope that the writers do explain HOW Burnham's mother is able to view/know events in the timeline (Yes, she has a suit; but how is she able to scan out timeline to 'see' events she needs to intervene?
I know I often say I don't like things 'spelled out' but IMO if the writers don't explain SOME of the more 'WTF" stuff (like WHY and HOW Burnham's mother went back 200 or so years to save a Church full of people from a Nuclear bomb and HOW she managed to transport all those people and the church to a Planet that would take 150 years at Warp 7 to reach - PLUS how she knew said planet would be inhabitable.
I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, I suspect that the real reason amounts to changing plans after the mid-season change of showrunners... in which case, any in-story explanation we get is liable to be (at best) contrived and less than entirely satisfying.
(OTOH, if it's true that the bullet we dodged with Berg and Harberts' departure was an anvilicious season-long theme about religious faith, I suppose I'll take "less than entirely satisfying" as a fair trade!)
What was all the EVA activity shown around the Discovery at the beginning of the episode?
I honestly didn't even notice anything like that. What did you see?
the premise of exploring the world of trek through the eyes of a brilliant, non-captain, underdog is a good one. but the producers continually mistake telling stories about a character with telling stories that hinge on that character. ...
as spock said last week (and this week), michael thinks she carries the weight of the universe on her shoulders. it’s as noble as it is annoying. wouldn’t it be more satisfying if the universe didn’t really revolve around michael burnham but she has agency enough to be part of saving the day anyway?
Truer words. I was really kind of hoping the main reason the RA had been seeking out Spock had nothing to do with Burnham and was instead based on the fact that Spock, himself, was one of the most famous heroic figures of the era... something that the characters wouldn't know, of course, but the audience would.
So you are upset that the setup of the character and the series and all these little nods and such are being actually explained? Shouldn't you be at least nodding that she gets her 'Weight of the world on her shoulders' from her mom?" Like most people do. This is exactly how a lot of novels are written, the slowly adding of information so that what didn't make sense before makes sense?
So instead, as the layers are unpeeled, your only defense, is "This is all nonsense!!"
Yes, there are bits and bobs and "little nods" and such strung through DSC. Many of those bits add up to good cumulative storytelling... and on the whole, I've been a fan of S2; it's a huge improvement over S1. But my point here is that
some of those bits don't gel so well, and indeed seem to undermine or contradict each other. I merely explained why, as I saw it, this episode was annoyingly full of that kind.
For instance: I
don't think most people inherit their personalities from their parents; I think they get them from life experience. And Burnham's experiences as shown so far are more than enough to explain her martyr complex without bringing her mother into it.
For instance, again: I think the story previously presented, explaining why Burnham blamed herself for her parents' deaths, was emotionally compelling, and
much preferable to the "small universe" reveal that they were actually, secretly central to the whole time-and-space-spanning plot she just happens to be enmeshed in at the moment.
(Have you ever read comics? Are you familiar with the retcon that "revealed" that Peter Parker was not just an ordinary orphan before his accident, but that in fact his parents had been secret agents who were killed by the Red Skull? That's the kind of completely unnecessary thing I'm talking about here.)
And the whole point of the exercise is to kill Burnham so the Red Angel shows up. Spock knew this, which is why he held a phaser on them (and, honestly, this halfbreed sociopath has a history of suggesting killing people - its kind of his goto move - so its not out of character for him at all). Not to mention that an attempt was made to beam her up, but there was too much interference.
I never suggested that was out of character for Spock — on the contrary, I agree that it fits him. I suggested the whole scheme, including the "point of the exercise" as you put it, was simply illogical from the get-go. And it was, because it relied on incomplete information and untenable assumptions.
Please do go take a long walk off a short pier.
Seriously, I've complained before about the way you apparently can't just disagree with other posters without feeling the need to take cheap shots. Cut it out, all right?
(As to the underlying point: in the scene as presented, the only reason they couldn't transport Michael straight to sickbay is that the RA had, finally, started to arrive. My point was that if they'd had a transporter lock all along, they could've yanked her the moment Spock obstructed the rescuers on the surface, without any problem. Indeed, if they'd had a transporter lock all along, the rescuers on the surface would've been frankly redundant in the first place.)
A
time crystal or
space-time crystal is a structure that repeats in
time, as well as in
space. ... Time Crystals are actual science. And sure they are used about as realistically as dilithium crystals, warp drives, shields, transporters etc. that Star Trek uses, but yes, they are based on actual science.
Yes, I've read the Wikipedia page. Are you honestly suggesting the time crystals in the show, with the powers seen in "MTMTSMGM" and now this season, bear
any relation to real-world phenomena other than a coincidentally shared name?
I'm not objecting to quasi-magical Treknology as a general thing. The difference between this and the other examples you mention, though, is that those examples help make the whole Star Trek concept possible by defining its parameters and boundaries, whereas this threatens to undermine and deconstruct them, as discussed above. (It's not unlike the problems presented by things like interstellar transporting and tribble blood in the Abrams films.)
I don't see how that's immature, to be honest. Punching the guy who caused your parents' death and wasn't even going to take responsibility seems like a pretty human and, possibly, merciful reaction.
Maybe I'm just less violently inclined than other people, then, but it wouldn't even occur to me. It honestly just comes across as ridiculous and juvenile.
Much like the probe that came back a squid, doesn't it seem probably that the suit came back from wherever it's been with added abilities? This seems like declaring that something doesn't make sense while the story is still telling itself.
That is a possible explanation for the suit, yes. And the story is serialized and hence "still telling itself," yes. But here's the thing: I've read plenty of novels (and watched plenty of serialized TV), and the key to making any given chapter dramatically effective is that it makes sense
in itself given the information the characters (and the readers) have at that point. In the case at hand, the episode only works because the characters
don't ask questions that, logically, they should be concerned about. Like, for instance, "hey, this suit appears to have powers way beyond what Federation tech could've built 20 years ago, or even today, so what makes us think we understand it well enough that this trap we've MacGyvered together will actually work against it?"
As for the bio-neural match, does it really seem plausible that the writers erroneously wrote that line knowing who was in the suit? Isn't it much more likely that we're only seeing part of a bigger, as-yet-unrevealed picture?
Again, could be. But again, any possible explanation (e.g., that the person in the RA suit really is Michael at some
other point in time) is something the characters themselves should have considered, at least enough to undermine their confidence that it Must Be Her and therefore their plan would work.
Bottom line, the whole plan only worked because the plot required it to. There is no set of logical assumptions that makes it plausible that the plan
would work (without also making it either unnecessary or foolhardy), and indeed in the end it only
did work because of information the characters didn't have.
TL;DR man. Does everything you post have to come across as a dissertation and a lecture?
Hey, I
like long posts! This isn't frickin' Twitter, and that's a good thing. If you don't care for them, feel free not to comment.
(Seriously, this is what I do as a
break from working on my actual dissertation...)
While I don't agree with everything you said, you do bring up some points that have been bugging me.
Thanks! Now, that's a friendly, civil sort of reply. I'm curious to know which parts you agree about and which you don't, and why.
LOL, at the few who are claiming they guessed the Red Angel’s identity. 
