Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x05 - "Die Trying"

The last contact with the mirror universe was circa 2689 per dialogue. The Picard show for comparison was set in 2399. There's almost 300 years between Picard and 2689 for the Federation to have continuous mirror universe misadventures.

For all we know that line was a teaser for Picard Season 2 set in the Mirror Universe.

As problematic as the character of Burnham is, Din Djarin is like 10x worse (and I actually like the Mandalorian show). He has an even more inflated sense of self importance than Burnham has, and has religious fanaticism added on top of that.

Michael thinks about stealing from the Federation but at least Saru talks her down. (minor spoilers for Mando)

Spoiler

Din is an accomplice to the murder of a New Republic officer, doesn't seem to know his "religion" is extremist even to mainstream Mandalorians, and doesn't surrender to the Republic and turn himself in to help the child, even though they have far better chances of helping his little green friend than his extremist fighting cult would. He's not even sharp enough to tell the Republic about Gideon when he runs into them, even though throwing the Republic after Gideon would make life much easier for him and the green friend.

 

One, Spock had recently struggled with mental problems. Two, Spock was demonstrated to have confidence in his sister to handle problems. Three, Spock isn't always right.

 

Real-life examples do not make sense or apply in this case. If you really want to compare the Discovery situation, then there is a suitable case in universe. There was already a primitive starship that went on an exploratory mission with crew and captain without basic knowledge of space affairs. The ship was called Enterprise NX-01.

 

After thinking about it more, the whole "Burnham tried to tell future Admiral what to do" makes sense when you think how Vance treated them, starting with Adira. He was basically all but telling them they were followers of Future Guy, so "you have to earn our trust" ('We're the cool kids, you're the new kid, let's ostracize you immediately unless you run 30 laps around the football field' kind of thing). Why should he be surprised when the recipient of said treatment starts saying "I know! I know! I'll do such and such and such to earn your trust!"?

Does it make sense logically when people (even the participants) think about it later? Of course not. But base human reactions don't usually make sense, they are done within an emotional context in reaction to the other party's demeanor.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, even Khan Noonien Singh of all people got a warmer reception in Space Seed. Kirk let him catch up on the times (although giving him the tech manuals was a mistake) and gave him a banquet.

 

Yet the discovery was not credited to that period of time. It was credited to the 500-year absence of Terran data prior to the episode itself, or more exactly to the final century of that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

03x05 Episode observations:

I enjoyed this episode a lot, quick admission: I love any episodes that show the inner workings of Starfleet, so I may be slightly over enjoying this. It's also one of those rare episodes with information dumps: 350 planets reached (up from 150 in the First Contact movie era) and only 38 left, which makes it fodder for future chronologies.

This is a really good overall episode, we not only have the "Closure, Phase 1" of finding the UFP and Starfleet but an unexpected side trip that felt pretty strong and emotional for only taking up the middle two acts.

First, the HQ was surprising, a distortion field and base, all of it pretty brand new and advanced. I honestly expected more of a hybrid...mostly an old/new 30th-century starbase. Excellent design with a plethora of new technologies.

The information we are given comes fast and furiously. Admiral Vance tells us the"Emerald Chain" (Orion and Andorian Syndicate) is becoming more brazen. There are more emergencies than they can really handle and the fleet is limited to respond. We are told that subspace relays are in fact in disrepair and coverage is spotty.

Vance is curious about the time travel...he is suspicious because of the previous Temporal War, and rightly so. He is completely correct to be cautious and concerned. I found him to be a very sensible Admiral...a rarity and certainly not the "evil admiral" cliche. There is no record of spore drive but there is a record of the Discovery...lost.

He orders Discovery to submit for analysis and retrofit, both perfectly reasonable as well, my guess is he wants to make use of the spore drive. The crew are desperate to prove themselves to keep this from happening. They succeed.

The interlude on the seed ship serves the purpose of helping the UFP in a mission of mercy as well as showing the benefits of this particular crew using this particular equipment. I found the dramatic elements to be convincing and surprisingly sad. While it seems sudden for Nahn to be made a regular, then go off on her own, it has the ring of truth to it...an alien out of time, who already had fractured ties to her planet manages to find a way to make her species useful as well as reacquainting with them on a personal level.

Meanwhile, there's an intriguing story happening with Empress Georgiou, in her best storyline of the season so far. David Cronenberg gives us an offbeat and effective performance and actually manages to shatter the Empress's calm...whether it was the very familiar acquaintance they now have with the MU and the news of it, or something we were not witness to (did he shock her with the source of the Burn after all)?) we simply don't know yet.

Next week, it looks we will be witness to even more of the functioning of Starfleet (joy).

Odds and ends:

Despite the show of effectiveness of the Discovery crew, I would expect this Spore Drive to be reverse engineered for the fleet...we should see some mention of this in the future.

The MU appears to be a known quantity now, and it makes us wonder what has replaced the Terran Empire. We've already seen the suggestion that something in that universe was "off" to make them what they were, so it's interesting to see there is another piece to the puzzle. How much of this is a fact, we don't know for sure yet.

The CME: this should be very familiar to Federation crews at this point, why didn't the Barzan father know what it was? Why was there no protection?

The seed bank is analogous to the one that currently exists on Earth, and is a good extrapolation, much as the Memory Alpha planets were to information.

Programmable matter. They are all in with is...good.

The ships:

The Constitution Class is mentioned as being able to possibly hold a crew of 2,000. I'd guess it's a mile long? Some ships were mentioned as having holographic containment walls! Some ships have Neutronium alloy fibers! Some of the hulls were organic! Are we seeing several generations of technologies here!?

Jeff Russo outdid himself with the music in this episode! I've replayed the teaser more than a few times.

Rating: While not quite as good as last week's episode, its a treasure trove for fans and more than satisfying: 9.25/10

RAMA

 

Don’t tell that to Kirk and crew, circa mid 2280’s, in the wake of Spock’s death.

 

Something or someone screwed up. Like that time an unsinkable state of the art ocean liner hit an iceberg and sank.

 

When Janeway cried, it meant something, cause it didn't happen all the time.
But Voyager also never faced constant drama like Disco did.

 

I'll take Burnham over Janeway any day. Burnham gave people a choice if they wanted to be kept far away from their homes. Janeway didn't

Vance has a low opinion of time travelers even when Discovery had no other choice. He's probably not a fan of 17 temporal violations Kirk

 

It's not the CME alone, but also the ion storm. Why does the Tikhov encounter these two both, even though the odds of meeting the minuscule cloud should be flat zero in the vastness of space already?

Combining the two solves the problem, sort of. If the Tikhov was in the storm, or close to it, she would not see the CME coming, and her shields would already be compromised.

Why loiter close to an ion storm? The seed bank is aboard a ship for a reason - it is not on a planet or an immobile space station, say (although there may be plenty of similar banks on those). Clearly, mobility provides some sort of an advantage. Perhaps the Tikhov is tasked with staying hidden (especially in these new Dark Ages), and for that reason dodges and weaves and occasionally dives into space anomalies...

Timo Saloniemi

 

A good episode. Too bad Burnham is still arrogant, I mean what the admiral wanted wasn't so bad. They had no reason to trust the Discovery crew.

 

She's proud of her ship and her crew Seems normal. Imagine what would happen if he suggested the ship should be hauled away as garbage!

 

Well, that's rude.

It must be nice to not have lenses or biases.

Lenses that I can think of: first gen TOS watcher (baby); Certified 70s Trek nerd child, with a Donmoor shirt, every book you can imagine, and several iterations of that damned AMT kit with drooping nacelles. Liker of TNG, fan of DS9 and VOY. Old reader of sf, golden through 80s. Don't like forced emotionalism. Want "Trek" to be GOOD-good, not decent-good, or good-for-Trek-good. Casual SW fan -- I know nothing of the extended tie-ins, even Clone Wars.

Also, I'm on record in this thread as liking this show the first 2-3 eps this season. Just like the last two seasons. And if the last two eps are any indication, I am getting played again. So it goes. I watch it with my wife. She likes it, and I keep my mouth shut.

I simply can't see (my fault for lack of vision) how one could like this maudlin claptrap and plot-vomit. Assuming it continues the direction it's taken again this season. With a stilted speech about . . . Giotto?! (About whom, yes, I was already aware.) And people thought Archer's gazelle speech was pretentious.

Lenses enough?

 

It's a 23rd century thing.

Janeway: It was a very different time, Mister Kim. Captain Sulu, Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy. They all belonged to a different breed of Starfleet officer. Imagine the era they lived in. The Alpha Quadrant still largely unexplored. Humanity on verge of war with Klingons. Romulans hiding behind every nebula. Even the technology we take for granted was still in its early stages. No plasma weapons, no multiphasic shields. Their ships were half as fast. Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then. It's not surprising they had to bend the rules a little. They were a little slower to invoke the Prime Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers. Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet today. But I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that.

 

Janeway: And fistfights. A lot more fistfights.

 

Did no one at Starfleet stumble into Discovery's vast dilithium vault and go all, like, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!!!"? There's so much dilithium there to distribute among the fleet that they could reconnect with all those cut-off member worlds! Clearly, Trill Symbiants are more worthy of scanning beams than, I dunno, the rocks that make the ships go whooosh!

Vance is an idiot! "Sure, you can keep your ship and all remain together. No worries."

 

For all we know, the dilithium has already been, umm, socialized. It would hardly be an event worth mentioning...

...Unless we assume the Discovery is such an old tub that she actually burns that stuff in such quantities that the holdful we saw was actually vital for keeping on moving. Kirk's ship was never credited with a particularly high rate of dilithium consumption; she loses three in "Mudd's Women", but there's only one left, not fifty, so the losses were exceptional rather than expected.

I'd much rather believe in Saru's flying laboratory having the crystals aboard for research purposes. Perhaps Stamets used to burn through four in a normal working day, before managing to finalize his spore drive? That Starfleet of 2257 wouldn't then confiscate the superfluous crystals just speaks of them not being particularly poor...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Is anyone more than a little underwhelmed by the designs of 32nd Starfleet vessels, uniforms and technology in Discovery? There doesn't seem to be any great difference one might expect.