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

[Sakonna]

Truly, how many more Super Secret Spy Devices can we see in this universe that FLASH BRIGHTLY AND MAKE CONSTANT LOUD NOISES when they're activated? I think I know how to defeat this ruthless spy agency: train officers to say "what is that sound?" whenever they hear unexplained weird noises!

Discovery really has a bit of that Marvel movie problem, of the stakes being TOO big. The extinction of all life in the universe is just too huge a thing, it becomes so abstract that I have no emotional response. It's so much more impactful to have a smaller-stakes story more narrowly focused on the fate of particular characters, or one alien society, or one planet.

It was interesting to hear Georgiou describe it as the Prime Universe on-screen. It doesn't seem to quite make sense for that to be terminology she uses, but OK!

The weakest part of season 1 was definitely the final two episodes, which I think were just awful, the only two flatly terrible eps that cycle, and I'm increasingly worried the same thing may happen this year. This narrative seems to be spiraling into incoherence at the exact moment it should be coming into focus, and it's harder for me to imagine ways they can wrap this all up in a satisfying way. Still, I'm going to try to remain optimistic! They'll have to successfully land one of the big season arcs one of these days!

 

[SolarisOne]

- How was Control/Leland indestructible? It's in a human body.

You didn't see the metallic "wounds" closing over and over again? His body was no longer human. They've basically pulled a Terminator: Genisys with Leland.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Is a rogue genocidal AI pedestrian and hackneyed?

Was that meant to be a serious question?

My sarcasm meter is on the fritz. It's going around, I hear.

 

[Amaris]

Why is it when someone has a time machine everything is still so urgent? You can access every point in the universe at any moment in time, and you're worried about a few minutes? Countdown clocks with a time and space suit? Doesn't work for me.

GREAT
* The moments between Spock and Michael
* Georgiou's dedication to protecting Michael, even if she claims otherwise.

GOOD
* Seeing the Burnhams together as a family was nice.
* Culber is back in his uniform.
* The last moment between Michael and Gabrielle.

MEH
* Too much technobabble. I started looking at my watch.
* Stop with the upside down spinning camera angles. Stop it. STOP.
* Tilly got one and a half lines. I am disappoint.

BLERGH
* CONTROL better not become the Borg, I swear to the goddess. I will flip every table I own.
* Indestructible Leland? Really?
* I hate download countdowns. "22%," "35%," then pauses and disconnects, etc. over so many minutes and hours. I mean, it's the 23rd century. Stop using AT&T.
* Why does CONTROL even need to have the data right now? It's coming from 950 years in the future, and clearly has some kind of hyper intelligence. It can't wait a few weeks until the ship docks?

This one didn't work well for me at all. I was hoping we'd get more than what we were promised with the ending of last week. I just feel like so much potential was wasted zipping between "we have to hurry now!" then suddenly "let's talk this out for 20 minutes" followed by "quick! we only have so many minutes/seconds!" it was just so poorly paced. So much potential here, and I feel it was squandered.

Also, to echo a sentiment @T'Bonz made upthread, the show's name is "Discovery." Why are we doing the same old sci-fi tropes again? Big galactic Fed/Klingon war in season 1. Evil AI trying to destroy the galaxy season 2. What's season 3: Klingon AI taking over the galaxy? I like much of what I've seen this season, and I consider it a vast improvement over the first season, but the talking moments where the technobabble was chest deep, I was thinking about why a show called "Discovery" doesn't actually explore very much. That's what happens when things get slow.

Anyway, all in all this episode gets a GENUINE 4. A few heartfelt moments can't save the convoluted solutions, pointless countdown clock, and fearful precursor to the Borg (I swear, it better fucking NOT).

P.S: If "Tyler" turns out to be CONTROL having infected him, I will knock 4 points off of the next episode just on principle.

 

[guyute03]

A 9. Drama, emotion, action, Time.

Discovery 02x11 thoughts & things noticed

- those "nanoprobrobes" going into Leland
- nod to Pike's terrible future
- return of the guy in wheelchair from Mudd's episode season 1
- return of "Geordi's Visor" guy
- "I like Science" <3
- Georgiou is growin' on me, doesn't think Leland is "Leland"
- pre-TNG "pattern enhancers"
- the mom-daughter loss stuff resonates with me, lost my mother when I was a child too
- Georgiou's fighting <3
- Spock is more Spock-like now
- No fate but what we make, to quote a phrase.

 

[XCV330]

If Discovery crew saw that the Sec.31 ship was downloading their "end of the galaxy" data, why didn't Pike just rain hell down on that smaller, less defended ship and end the matter then and there? I have a feeling ill like this episode less than i did when I wake up tomorrow.

 

[Cyrus]

Mama Burnham told MU Georgiou that she will sacrifice her life for Michael. This is part of softening the Georgiou character for her upcoming series. She is kind of like Darth Vader, being brought back from the dark side due to her love for her adopted daughter. even though this one is from a parallel universe.

I definitely don't like the Borg hints for Leland with nano probes and him trying to assimilate Tyler. They even had him say "Struggle is pointless" which sounds like the first draft of "Resistance is Futile". I certainly hope they avoid this can of worms, it won't align anything with canon.

This episode was kind of a let down but I am still excited to see the final three episodes.

 

[SolarisOne]

- No fate but what we make, to quote a phrase.

Funny, since they keep using Terminator tropes this season. Not that I'm complaining--it's still better than last season's "arc".

 

[jfordny]

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.

I like Burnham fine, but I don't care for the evil AI trying to destroy all life in the universe story. Maybe it will wrap up with a bang. I hope.

I'm also not a fan of the back from the dead mother idea. I think introducing Spock this season was enough family drama, and they could have done more with him, Burnham, Sarek. and Amanda.

 

[Jesse1066]

I've found it impossible to give an immediate rating to episodes of DSC. I won't know how I feel about each episode until I've seen where everything leads and maybe rewatched the whole season. I've been enjoying the buildup over the last several episodes, but the finale is the key.

 

[CorporalClegg]

@Amaris & @T'Bonz I think the plan is to go back to 'discoverying' moving forward from next season. With all the series in the pipeline, there is one that needs to be "Star Trek" and from what we know, none of the others seem to be headed down that route. And a Pike series just doesn't seem very likely. It also looks more and more like a series soft-reboot is coming. (It's certainly not unprecedented.)

This is just them going through the motions to get there after scraping whatever the long-term plan had been. That's my hope, anyway.

 

[Amaris]

@Amaris & @T'Bonz I think the plan is to go back to 'discoverying' moving forward from next season. With all the series in the pipeline, there is one that needs to be "Star Trek" and from what we know, none of the others seem to be headed down that route. And a Pike series just doesn't seem very likely. It also looks more and more like a series soft-reboot is coming. (It's certainly not unprecedented.)

This is just them going through the motions to get there after scraping whatever the long-term plan had been. That's my hope, anyway.

I hope you're right. In fairness, though, to go back to "Discoverying," they had to start with it in the first place. The first 10 minutes of the first episode? Potential. After that, down the rabbit hole we went.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I definitely don't like the Borg hints for Leland with nano probes and him trying to assimilate Tyler. They even had him say "Struggle is pointless" which sounds like the first draft of "Resistance is Futile". I certainly hope they avoid this can of worms, it won't align anything with canon.

Well... as the Borg Queen has always said, don’t think so three-dimensionally. Since this season is all about time travel, there’s nothing that says some part of Control/Leland can’t go back thousands of years in time to create the first Borg.

Mind you, I REALLY HOPE this doesn’t happen, but flipping the magic 8-ball around is telling me “all signs point to YES”.

 

[Amaris]

Well... as the Borg Queen has always said, don’t think so three-dimensionally. Since this season is all about time travel, there’s nothing that says Control/Leland can’t go back thousands of years in time to create the first Borg.

Mind you, I REALLY HOPE this doesn’t happen, but flipping the magic 8-ball around is telling me “all signs point to YES”.

[ puts their tables on notice ]

 

[SolarisOne]

I don't think Leland is a precursor to the Borg. As it stands now, his body appears to be able to take much more punishment without personal shield generators. He seems much more like an android than a cyborg.

 

[lawman]

Well, that was 15 minutes of story packed into 50 minutes of episode. (In notable contrast to DSC's usual too-fast pacing issues.) It didn't really even get started until nearly 20 minutes in, when Pike beamed down to talk to Mama Burnham.

And then most of the rest of it seemed dedicated to little more than turning the Sphere data—which had originally seemed like an interesting thing in its own right—into just an obvious McGuffin to be kept away from the Bad Guy.

What exactly is this season supposed to be about again? When and how and why will Control destroy all life in the galaxy, and why can't Control do this without the Sphere data? How did Mama Burnham acquire the power to transport a colony across space, revive a dead person, and spy on past events? Will we ever get answers to any of these questions? I'm seriously starting to doubt it.

 

[DaveyNY]

I don't think Leland is a precursor to the Borg. As it stands now, his body appears to be able to take much more punishment without personal shield generators. He seems much more like an android than a cyborg.

He's pretty much a T-2000 at this point.
Especially the way his body heals.

 

[Mr Awe]

I gave this one an 8 just like the previous one. Although, I like this one a bit better. The eventual connection between Michael and her mother was nice. Great to see some of the back story. And, the AI is one nasty thing to fight! They're doing a great job of making that clear. It adapts and plans ahead far better than humans.

Generally a very enjoyable episode. It's not better than an 8 because there was a bit of wheel spinning. The episode seemed a bit stretched--although not badly so.

Michael's mother not wanting to see Michael at first is a bit inexplicable.

I did hypothesize right after the Project Daedalus episode that the Red Angel had something do with Discovery obtaining the AI data to keep it out of Control's hands. So, one point for me!

Control had a good plan to use Leland to intercept that data and the fight to prevent that was intense.

It seems more and more likely that the eventual solution will be to push all the data to the future. Possibly discovery itself.

 

[SolarisOne]

He's pretty much a T-2000 at this point.
Especially the way his body heals.

SOMEONE FINALLY GETS IT.
Although, I will point out that he's more like a T-3000, which is why I mentioned Genisys earlier. It's immediately what came to mind while watching the "assimilation" scene. The Borg doesn't entirely convert a person into machine form--this appeared to be exactly what happened to Leland.

 

[Noname Given]

10/10 (I guess I'm weird going by most of the other posts here but I really enjoyed it - and even teared up a bit here and there which I haven't done since STII:TWoK and STIII:TSFS.

Liked:
- That (unlike what they intimated at the end of the previous episode); it wasn't just a: "Okay, we have the suit, it's powered down and everyone's alive and fine..." which many past Star Trek 'anomalous tech' episodes have done in the past,

- That this Time Travel tech was portrayed as very dangerous and it's interesting to me in that they tried to show that for 20 years, Burnham's mother has been time traveling and trying to find out IF time can be changed (so, yeah, the reason behind her saving the Church and the people inside works for me although I agree that I too would like to know HOW the suit allowed the operator to move that large and object and all the people.)

- The interplay between Empress Georgiou and Tyler.

- The scenes between Burnham's mom and Pike, the scenes between Burnham's mom and Empress Gergiou, the scenes between Micheal Burnham and her mom. Some of that did make me tear up despite myself; and I can buy that Burnham's mom at first HAS given up trying to return and is trying to convince herself that she doesn't care/has had to let go of her daughter and everyone she's loved because for her they ARE 950 years dead -- Yet, at her core, the more she interacts with her daughter; she (and the audience know that's a lie as Burnham's mom has been watching out for her and saving her life in every timeline where she sees her daughter die. Yes, it begs the question that if she can save her daughter; why can't she save her husband as well; but hey, it wouldn't be Star Trek without YATIs here and there.

- I also liked the 'warning' given to Pike about his future. She wants to make him do what she wants, or at least leave her alone and just let her 'save the Galaxy' her way, and she hopes making him uneasy will do that. She used similar tactics with Empress Georgiou.

- The inference that Burnham's mom isn't lying when she says: "What signals..." I actually don't mind that there may be something further trying to save the timeline.

- The scene between Spock and Burnham near the end and Spock's speech that says: "Your mother was wrong...Now matters because in the end it's all we have..."

Disliked:
- The idea that somehow, the 'Sphere Data' somehow contains some 'techno-magic' (for want of a better term); that will make the 'Control A.I.' sentient. Like others have commented, it seemed sentient already. I suppose one could posit that there's something in the totality of the Sphere Data that allows the A.I. to more easily/quickly accomplish its ultimate goal of wiping out all sentient biological life <--- But the writers of this episode seemed pretty intent that somehow it needs to acquire 100% of the Sphere Data to become sentient, and destroy all life.

- The further 'softening' and 'attempt to make her more likable' of Empress Gergiou. For me it's a double-edged sword (pun intended) in that I like that they got Michelle Yeoh interested enough to be willing to play the Lead in a Trek series, and that for the Section 31 show to appeal/work for casual viewers and Trek fans that you have to find something redeeming/likable/relatable for a Lead character; but she does Evil characters so well, I think turning the Empress even a little 'good' diminishes the character for me. YMMV.

Again, in the final analysis, I guess I really liked that this was a treatment of the old reliable Star Trek Time Travel trope that they really haven't done in this way previously. The closest Star trek came previously to making Time Travel more mysterious and treacherous was with the 'character of "The Guardian of Forever" i n TOS S1 - "City on the Edge of Forever"; and I liked it.

[I know a lot of Star Trek fans love that episode and the Kirk/Edith Keeler bit; but for me after "The Guardian of Forever" and how that artifact was portrayed, the rest of it is just a sappy love story with the requisite tragic ending. <--- For me, that's 'meh'..again YMMV. ]