Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x11 - "Perpetual Infinity"

[Tim Thomason]

950 years in the future, from when Michael was 10 years old, is 3186 - the late 32nd century.

Gabrielle has aged somewhat in her 821 trips, so it's possible that she's in the early 33rd century

But Calypso was merely a "thousand" years after Discovery was abandoned, whenever that was, which places it in the late 33rd century at least (after 3257).

 

[Lord Garth]

But Calypso was merely a "thousand" years after Discovery was abandoned, whenever that was, which places it in the late 33rd century at least (after 3257).

I think in "Calypso", it was only "almost 1,000 years", not 1,000. So late-32nd or early-33rd Century work too.

 

[Sakonna]

Well, that was much improved from last weeks mess, but still quite a bit off the high quality run that was episode 2 - 8 this season. It seems increasingly probable that wild swings in quality will be a feature of Discovery for the length of it's run.

Why does this show struggle so mightily with pacing and timeline issues? They're repeatedly putting tight clocks on situations, then dropping long talky scenes in right after. For example, this week Saru introduces that they only have an hour or two before Ma Burnham is lost to them forever. And that's followed with... a time-lapse of Michael listening to 900 log entries! That is not a competent scene juxtaposition!

This show just needs to find some way to break itself from it's compulsion to try to have EVERYTHING both ways, because it's this impulse to overindulgence that keeps sabotaging them. As in this example -- talky scenes can be great! Tense ticking clock situations can be great! You can't have both of them in the same sequence, because they undermine and ruin each other! Choose one!

 

[Paul755]

Meh. 6 is the highest I would rate this and that being generous.

Georgiou was the best part of the show. The line about Pike not going to like his fate was a bit on the nose but not terrible. Nothing else really worked for me at all.

 

[Avro Arrow]

7000 is 2/3 of what number?

10,500

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

The Star Charts book has Eta Lupi in the Beta Quadrant and is 440 light years away from Earth, Alpha Lupi is part of the same constellation so it's probably also in the same quadrant.

Discovery uses Star Charts as there map reference.

Thanks for the info!

 

[Mechanoid1]

The time line has changed because there is sentient life in the galaxy 1000 years from now, as wasnt the case when momy Burnham 1st arrived in the future.
Since Zora has been waiting for the crew for almost a thousand years. Craft is married to Mickys 1/2 sister, moms been busy after being stuck in the future this last time.
I wanted Mommy Burnham to tell Capt. Pike about his future accident. These next episodes just cant come soon enough.
IF Control is already an AI, what more info does it need to be more AI?
So much information from this last episode.

 

[PT109]

My friend thought he heard some of the music motifs from Calypso, i didn’t notice.

Oh yeah. It's there. I noticed too.

Perpetual Infinity at 20:00 (Pike meets Dr. Burnham)
Calypso at 00:52 (Future Discovery captures Craft's pod)

 

[Search4]

Sorry, imho convoluted and disappointing. Just how did a super-suit move a church full of people 50,000 light years instantly? Not a lot of churches have life support.

How about, I don’t know, using said super suit to destroy the sphere data after the sphere sends it to Discovery? Put the people in shuttle, blow the ship if you have to. Easy. “The sphere data wants to survive” is ridiculous, it can’t survive without a physical media.

Or btw if the sphere is so damned smart it can’t build a backup?

5/10. Plot is seriously off the rails and we are going to need to reboot the timeline I’d bet.

 

[Sakonna]

The one thing that threw me, and I think I just missed it, is why Dr. Burnham couldn't just climb back into the suit before it flew away. Can anyone set me right on that one?

Not to mention -- won't she and the suit just end up next to each other back at her home base? Based off Michael's "I'm still going to rescue you" statement at the end, it didn't seem like they believed travel through the wormhole without the suit would be fatal?

Mama Burnham in particular was a waste of a character, as she's literally portrayed as a vehicle for exposition - nothing less and nothing more - until the last few minutes.

She was also a vehicle for making grandiose pronouncements about the properties of time that were somehow so vague they communicated no substantive information at all. I actually bust out laughing at whatever her last "time is..." statement was.

 

[Fleet Admiral Tuvix]

I presume that the sphere installed a rootkit (or three) in Discovery's computer systems to prevent the file system from modifying the data.

The crew may not have even known about it, since Airiam - who worked closest with the data - was compromised too.

That's the sort of thing that could be infeasible to get rid of in the constraints of the show time.

 

[Gilora]

BTW, Sonequa Martin-Green's husband Kenric Green played Burnham's father.

I predicted this. Not exactly a stretch.

BTW, my score of 7 for the episode includes .5 for Spock's sweet gesture at the end and .5 for Papi being back in his doctor's whites.

 

[DaveyNY]

8 only because it's not the complete story yet.
They'll all be 9's for me by the time we get to Episode 14.

This is one freaking fantastic story, I'm gonna have to binge the entire second season the day after episode 14 premiers!

 

[SolarisOne]

Sorry, imho convoluted and disappointing. Just how did a super-suit move a church full of people 50,000 light years instantly?

 

[T'Bonz]

This one didn't do it for me, especially after the last few episodes. I gave it a 5 and mulled over giving it lower.

Random thoughts:
- How was Control/Leland indestructible? It's in a human body.
- I winced when Mama Burnham told Pike that he wouldn't like his fate.
- Mama going from "fuck off, I'm saving the universe" to "I love you precious baby" just didn't cut it for me. She must have got whiplash from the 180.

Also, I guarantee you that if you saw your mother after thinking for 20 years she was dead, you’d not care about the fate of the universe either...

And as a mother, knowing that my child was in distress, I'd have taken a few minutes to be...Mom. The universe isn't going to lose everyone in the two or three minutes. If they do - oh well. Who would know?

-The scene with them as a family was partly responsible for my 5 (instead of a 1 or 2).

I don't know. This whole time-traveling to save all sentient life 'cause an evil AI is - well - just doesn't do it for me.

I want Discovery - as in go out and meet new civilizations, not an episodes-long arc about an evil AI. And I'm already bored with Section 31. Never liked them in DS9 either even though Sloan was nice to look at in that black leather...

How anyone call call Burnham a Mary Sue after this is beyond me. Yeah, she's human and makes her own mistakes, but talk about bad luck! She gets hosed by Sarek who preferred that his flesh and blood get the one spot; her first love turns out to have an inner Klingon in him, her Mom returns out of the blue and then vanishes again, and well, she sure could use a break.

I think I got spoiled by several very good eps in a row. Things had to even out eventually.

 

[LizStargaryen]

Judging from the responses, I think people were hoping the Red Angel would've been an Iconian... can't remember all the other theories...

This is the opposite of Season 1's twist, when I saw the Tyler-is-Voq and into-the-mirrorverse-we-go theories on every board I looked on. No one really guessed it was Michael's mother.

And I think that's where the season, and the series, will either find its footing with fans or fail. Some of us (including me) are invested in Michael Burnham's character, but others aren't. All previous Treks were like solar systems. The captain was the sun, but there were always interesting (more or less) planets revolving around them.

In this Trek, Michael's more central than even most captains in previous series. If you don't really care much for the character or her journey, then flaws and problems in the writing will be amplified.

 

[eschaton]

I think the thing that I can't really get over is that the season started so damn promising. They were dealing with a compelling and awesome mystery. It felt like the season would be about the mystery and the adventures they encounter while chasing the answer to the mystery down.

The mystery itself was compelling enough to keep interest, while the week-to-week adventures would be fun, dramatic, action-packed and engaging.

But now, we've turned to it into "yet another villain plot" (using the massively overdone sci fi cliche of the evil AI) and a bunch of massively over-complicated technobabble time stuff with really very little mystery remaining.

Damn it, I hope they pull a rabbit out in the last three episodes. Everything was humming until last week.

The one good thing the episode showed is the red bursts have nothing to do with the Red Angel. They're going to visit a red burst in the next episode. This means that some hint of the original mystery remains, considering it was the red burst that guided them to the dark matter asteroid, New Eden, etc.

The new writing team seems completely lost when it comes to writing for Stamets, Tilley and Tyler.

Tilley had her moments at the beginning of the season, and now she's basically a Detmer but with a whacky streak.

I agree with you on Tyler and Tilly - I think both are generally speaking useless to the plots this season . Not sure I agree with Stamets. They really didn't do his character justice last season either, since he mostly existed to spout technobabble and mourn Culber by the back half. Really what he's given here is pretty much the same.

But yeah, since the 5th episode, Tilly and Stamets have basically been supporting characters, given almost no screen time. Tyler is given screen time, but he's never given anything interesting to do, and remains relentlessly bland. Hell, since Saru leveled up he's been almost a supporting character too. The "main cast" now seems to be Burnham, Spock, Pike, and Georgiou.

 

[LizStargaryen]

I agree with you on Tyler and Tilly - I think both are generally speaking useless to the plots this season . Not sure I agree with Stamets. They really didn't do his character justice last season either, since he mostly existed to spout technobabble and mourn Culber by the back half. Really what he's given here is pretty much the same.

But yeah, since the 5th episode, Tilly and Stamets have basically been supporting characters, given almost no screen time. Tyler is given screen time, but he's never given anything interesting to do, and remains relentlessly bland. Hell, since Saru leveled up he's been almost a supporting character too. The "main cast" now seems to be Burnham, Spock, Pike, and Georgiou.

Definitely agree with you about this, and I like the main cast you've named. They managed to thread the needle when it came to bringing back Pike and Spock pre-TOS, but they still haven't given us nearly enough material for the others.

This is where having fewer eps hurts. But they really could do more with their non-Michael B and C plots in the space they have. Building in little character moments would help us get to know the others.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Judging from the responses, I think people were hoping the Red Angel would've been an Iconian... .

I would have settled for anything that's not as pedestrian and hackneyed as "long lost mommy."

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Is a rogue genocidal AI pedestrian and hackneyed?