Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x03 - "People of Earth"

[Sarcastic Vulcan Salute]

Really too messy for me, a 6 this time.

A few observations...

The whole plot with the raiders being actually human was telegraphed since the beginning but doesn’t make much sense to me. Since FTL travel is now very difficult it would make sense to keep in touch with colonies in the solar system, yet they totally abandon titan, never check in with them and even shoot on their ships for reasons? And why were the raiders raiding dilithium for years, exactly?

The Trill symbiont being the admiral and joined with adira was really clever, didn’t see that coming.

The EDF seems extremely sloppy...among other things, they correctly identify discovery as being from the 23rh (up to 25th) century and have no problem believing their silly story of being a generational ship, they don’t even question the 900 years old uniforms.

So now discovery carries hundreds of dilithium crystals? The enterprise used to have only 6, being a rare to acquire commodity...

Why did they have Michael be separated for only a single year and then act as if she’s spent several years with Book in the 31th century?

Where is Sahil?! Why do that fantastic scene in the first episode and then forget him completely here? He’s the one who has been waiting all his life for the federation, he should have come along.

Good on you for figuring out that the raiders were human. I didn't see how it was telegraphed. For all we knew, they were Breen the Next Generation.

There are lots of reasons why Titan might have gone independent, just as colonies in actual Earth history became independent. But in the particular situation, it makes sense to me that an Earth that was in turmoil from the Burn and/or Starfleet picking up stakes would become insular and be like, "Colonies, you're on your own."

Dilithium is the most valuable commodity in the galaxxy because of the Burn, from everything stated on teh show this season. Why wouldn't they be raiding for dilithium?

Why is the story of it being a generaitonal story inherently silly, and who says they bought it? They did conduct a massive inspection and before things were through, it became clear that while the story was a lie, they were in fact a ship with Earth roots.

Why is it silly that the descendants of a generational ship would keep on wearing the uniforms of their ancestors?

Where was it said that the Enterprise had only six, always?

Where do you get that they are acting like they spent several years? Why couldn't it just be a very eventful year, in which they had a lot of adventures together, as opposed to several less eventful years?

Someone has got to man the fort, and Sahil probably is it. Of course, it may be that Sahil has gotten dispatched on his own adventures...or just dispatched. I'm sure we will revisit him before too long.

If a research colony on Titan still existed I am not sure why full on long term colony's and a terraformed planet wouldn't.

Just because one colony continued on doesn't mean that every colony and planet would be so lucky.

Why wear that mask? Maybe they wouldn’t act so hostile if they knew they were humans

Who says that EDF didn't know that the raiders were humans?

And it seems like the EDF acted every bit as hostile as they could to Discovery, who were mostly human.

It’s the 32nd century. How can the comma be limited? They could talk that far in the 22nd century?

Aside from the possible lack of resources, I think we were told about problems with subspace in one of these first couple of episodes.

There's a real problem with that description.
Scotty is actually handling the rough crystals in "Elaan of Troyius".
One would think that if they have some kind of massive power within them, it would be detrimental to any person's health when handling them.
And wearing them as a necklace would certainly be deadly after awhile.

Think of coal as analogous to dilithium. It's perfectly fine to carry it around until you try to harness its potential for energy.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Honestly the abandonment of the offworld colonies in the solar system isn't that surprising to me.

Humans as depicted in Star Trek seem to have a very, very low reproduction rate. Very few characters manage to have children, even if they are middle aged. And if they do have kids they stop with 1-2 children. Sure humans live longer, but the human population should have been perpetually shrinking for centuries at this point. This probably led to the systematic abandonment of many offworld colonies due to sheer lack of interest.

It's a bigger question to be why a "research colony" on Titan would last for 1,000 years. What the hell is left to research on Titan after all that time?

Al the tentacle things that live under the ice or such there

 

[guyute03]

Gave it a 9. Excited to watch new Discovery episodes each week. A Trek future I never expected where hope (and maybe a bit of bar brawl skills) is the most important thing, besides the obvious.

And Adira steals the show. The show calls her "she" so I will too... and she is freaking awesome. LOVE.

 

[thribs]

Star Trek now has Belters.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Occam’s razor. The easiest answer is in which a joint Trill with the last name Tal is in fact in possession of a symbiont named Tal. Dax was known as the Dax symbiont for centuries. Why would that change suddenly? It just seems a long reach at this point.

Sure it COULD be the case that it’s Dax, but it’s not particularly likely. AND we have a new show runner this season who seems to be more interested in blazing a new path while utilizing canon as it should: a well-woven tapestry to refer to.

I see you Occams Razor and raise you Small World Syndrome. If two people in the same fictional universe could possibly be the same person, they usually are. It applies to Star Trek just as much as it does to Fargo.

Even if it were Dax it wouldn't really be any of *our* Daxes. 24 personalities instead of 9, with memories inaccessible to the host. It would still be more Adira than Dax, only getting vague emotions and memories from Dax.

 

[Ometiklan]

I enjoyed this episode a little more than the last one, so an 8 for me.

Still have some very rough plotting to justify the Titan base's isolation, the lack of any other infrastructure or communications in the entire Sol system, the lack of interest in Discovery, its drive, sharing information, upgrading Discovery's tech with anything Burnham has learned or Book has access too, showing any technology almost 800 years beyond anything seen before in main Trek series, etc. It's like the writers wanted to jump Discovery forward to this new time frame to not be burdened by canon, but didn't want to really put in the effort to deal with the reality of the situation. Nah. Couldn't be. Probably saving it all for some related novelizations...

Anyway, enjoying this season a lot - despite these minor issues.

Ok the ending of this episode was just tonally off.

First of all, what's the rush for Discovery to find the cause of the Burn? The Federation's been gone for a century, waiting a few more weeks or even months won't hurt...

So far, the mission of Discovery isn't to find the cause of The Burn, but to find the Federation (and rebuild it?). Burnham made it her personal mission to find the cause in the year she was alone. Maybe later they will combine/adopt that mission, though not so far.

Other than that, I agree with your other questions. I think there should have been more of a focus on welcoming Discovery's arrival, considering replicating the spore drive (till they handwave some reason for not being able to do it), getting a up-to-date historical database (as of maybe, circa 3060), updating their ship technology, etc.

 

[Airmandan]

I have just learned to lower my expectations with the show. If I go in expecting it to be as detailed oriented as some of the previous shows I'll be sorely disappointed. If I just watch it and enjoy it for what it is I can kind of get by. I like that they have thrown little details from the books into the show.
I just couldn't figure out what the whole rush was at the end of the episode. You'd think that the crew and ship would take some R/R on Earth and try to learn about this new time they're in and get some badly needed upgrades. They took 2 Quantum torpedo's and they completely knocked down their shields, you'd think they'd want to get those updated a bit before they go cruising the galaxy a bit.

 

[PT109]

Re: Earth's isolation. It's definitely apples and oranges but it gave me a bit of an Aldea ("When the Bough Breaks") vibe. An ancient and legendary advanced civilization that has regressed due to its insularity.

This wasn't hinted at in the episode but due to how fragmentary and isolated the galaxy appears to be in this century, it is quite easy to imagine that Earth could be considered mythical to people that were cut off by the Burn far from the core of the old Federation.

Kind of cool to see the classic Remnants of a Once Great Civilization Trek trope from a unique (and quite personal) point of view.

 

[eschaton]

IMHO finding the cause of The Burn is stupid, and not the plot arc for the season.

Why bother? You can't un-explode the ships a century later. The dilithium that has survived works just fine. It's not an ongoing issue. I suppose vengeance? Seems easier to just find a dilithium planet somewhere though.

 

[XCV330]

IMHO finding the cause of The Burn is stupid, and not the plot arc for the season.

Why bother? You can't un-explode the ships a century later. The dilithium that has survived works just fine. It's not an ongoing issue. I suppose vengeance? Seems easier to just find a dilithium planet somewhere though.

If it was deliberately caused by some means unknown, then whoever did it might intervene and attempt some new method to keep the Fed from reforming if some workaround was found.

I just couldn't figure out what the whole rush was at the end of the episode. You'd think that the crew and ship would take some R/R on Earth and try to learn about this new time they're in and get some badly needed upgrades. They took 2 Quantum torpedo's and they completely knocked down their shields, you'd think they'd want to get those updated a bit before they go cruising the galaxy a bit.

they're a floating Fort Knox with all that dlithium. A floating Fort Knox armed with muskets and armored with paper. they can't stay in one place for long, at all.

Star Trek now has Belters.

Star Trek had Belters before there were Belters

 

[Paul755]

I preferred the first two episodes. Gave those both a 6, this gets a 5.

The best thing about the episode is the chemistry between SMG and Ajala. Those two click like nobody’s business.

It really kinda gets on my nerves how much this crew cries and hugs. I don’t know why.

Mirror Georgiou is awesome.

Having Earth be the one to abandon the Federation instead of being the last bastion, the last hope, trying to keep it together feels like they are trying to make social commentary on Trump’s America and his America First desire to pull us out of NATO, etc... Honestly, it’s one twist I never would have seen coming. I would have expected Earth to be the brightest of those last 6 stars on the Federation Flag.

glad the Trill symbiot isn’t Dax. But I suspect we’ll see Dax when they go to Trill.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I still have a few hours to go till the episode drops here..... I'm excited

 

[Awesome Possum]

And Adira steals the show. The show calls her "she" so I will too... and she is freaking awesome. LOVE.

Other characters refer to them as she. The actor has an interview on TrekCore that discusses it, Adira is still figuring out their identity and we'll get to follow their journey of figuring this out. But it's still accurate to refer to them as they/them.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

IMHO finding the cause of The Burn is stupid, and not the plot arc for the season.

Why bother? You can't un-explode the ships a century later. The dilithium that has survived works just fine. It's not an ongoing issue. I suppose vengeance? Seems easier to just find a dilithium planet somewhere though.

The main plot arc is finding the Federation and rebuilding it. Finding out what caused the burn is necessary, not because of revenge but for the need of understanding it and to prevent it from possibly happening again.

 

[Saul]

It really kinda gets on my nerves how much this crew cries and hugs. I don’t know why.

Perhaps because it doesn't feel earned and they over do it? We have seen characters on other shows hug and cry but it was much later down the line and those moments didn't come as often but when they did you felt it was genuine. Here it feels like a bunch of teens not in control of their emotions.

Having Earth be the one to abandon the Federation instead of being the last bastion, the last hope, trying to keep it together feels like they are trying to make social commentary on Trump’s America and his America First desire to pull us out of NATO, etc... Honestly, it’s one twist I never would have seen coming. I would have expected Earth to be the brightest of those last 6 stars on the Federation Flag.

In the same way people had expected that Brexit wouldn't happen, Trump wouldn't be elected.
I think some people will hate the idea and say it doesn't reflect the ideals of the future of Star Trek or some people will think it's bluntly obvious that it's a reflection of what's happening today. But I like this more than how they did it in Picard where we still had a Federation around but they weren't all that nice.

 

[Slugboy]

I really don't mind that they're throwing some unexpected curves and situations; but I hope some of this stuff does get explained. I mean a Xenophobic Eartth I think would mean they do a through background/medical heck of their Defense force yet some they (the EDF) DON'T KNOW this 16 year old is a Trill host?

I don't think they're necessarily xenophobic in that they discriminate against other species, though. If you watch the scene when the inspection team beams aboard, the second inspector to beam onto the bridge is definitely not human (he looks like a Tellarite). So United Earth may be "Earth First", but they aren't necessarily "Humans First" (on the other hand, every other inspector appeared Human).

 

[Awesome Possum]

• I'm wondering about Adira's pronouns, because the press release used they/them, but everybody seemed to use she/her even in Adira's presence, so I don't know if the character is supposed to be female, meekly accepting being misgendered, or if the show is reserving they/them after successfully accessing Admiral Tal's memories. I actually believed at first that she merely invented the admiral to lure Federation ships so that she could join them, so the Trill symbiont genuinely caught me by surprise.

They just aren't out yet, so they're just accepting being misgendered like a lot of trans people do before coming out. And I doubt using they/them has anything to do with a Trill given that there are plenty of non-binary people existing now including the actor who plays Adira, and none of them are joined with Trills.

 

[Awesome Possum]

All those people who yelled at me calling that new character a she when they all did in this episode. I expect an apology.

No, you're still wrong given that this information was released before the season aired. They just aren't out yet, the show is going to show their journey of accepting who they are and coming out to the crew.

I wonder if the enby status is going to be something which is "innate" to Adira, or something that the joining caused? Even in Trill, the unprepared joining can cause some sort of dysphoria (though the gender elements of it were never really explored).

Going the latter route makes sense in-universe, but had the drawback of being potentially offensive to enbys by medicalizing/pathologizing the status.

Also makes me wonder how Grey is going to be involved next week. Is the symbiont supposed to be put into him?

It would be incredibly offensive to imply that the first trans character on Star Trek is trans because of an alien inside them. So it would be innate like it is for all trans people.

 

[SolarisOne]

Outweighs the needs of the canon, or the fans

 

[rhllot]

I liked seeing a tellarite as a member of the EDF forces.