Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x08 - "The Sanctuary"

Doesn’t look like he has rank pips either. Assuming this is some kind of hologram. Wonder what the 24th century has to do with Gerogiou’s issue anyway?

 

... probably more so for 'viridian green'?

 

Georgiou could be a hologram contained within a field to stabilize her, much as holograms were described being used as bulkheads on some 32nd century ships when Discovery first arrived. David Cronenberg could have scanned and programmed a Georgiou hologram and used that AI to spy on Discovery and her crew.

 

props master eye spy: S1 TNG starfleet ops gold spandex with a 'Generations' combadge ... timeline error.

... or was it?

 

I like the idea that by the 32nd century and after The Burn historical records may not be up to par and sometimes holographic recreations are cobbled together from what the best existing records indicate.

 

good point actually ... considering that the 'historical record' of that particular holographic imagery would only be a span of 2363 – 2371 Federation/Starfleet archives.

 

It would almost be a nod to living witness

 

Freaking heck I completely forgot that this could be the tie into Calypso.
Discovery was in a nebula waiting there for 1000 years... what if its the same nebula and 32nd century Discovery comes to find a 23rd century style USS Discovery with fully sentient Zora?

Temporal mishap or a predestination paradox?
Alternate universe USS Discovery perhaps?

 

Better than last week, but still not quite what I would call "great." Particularly given we're heading into the end-run of the season and this is still fundamentally a relatively low-stakes, episodic adventure.

So, really there were three plots this week. The A plot on Book's homeworld, and then little mini B/C plots dealing with the decipherment of the Burn signal/whatever the hell is happening to Georgiou. The main issue with this for me is they didn't really share any common thread thematically. They all just happened because they needed to at this particular point in the story. I actually think all of them would have worked better if they were teased apart into different episodes (or at least shunted into episodes they worked better with). Yet at the same time the B/C plots didn't really do much of anything? Georgiou still has some mysterious illness, and while a bit more of the Burn mystery is teased out, it's still nothing satisfying.

I am not entirely sure how I felt about the guest actors this week. Ryn was good again. But Book's "brother" felt unconvincing until the end of the episode. I understand that the script - and direction - called for unrelenting hostility, but made the supposedly fraternal relationship not feel...real. He just seemed like this dude who was really, really angry at Book. And Osyraa didn't have the needed gravitas for a recurring villain, IMHO. Indeed, she seemed a bit campy and corny. I'm also just not liking how Discovery is depicting Orions in general - the makeup just looks really cheap.

On the other hand, as has been the case with much of this season, I'm happy with the episode from a character standpoint. Book has made a full transition to Starfleet true believer to such a degree that even Michael looks askance. Detmer has what I would presume would be the conclusion to her PTSD arc. The Adira/Stamets scenes continue to be sweet.

Discovery is undoubtedly a much better, more consistent show now than in the first two seasons. Nothing has fallen apart yet into a dangling mess of hanging plot threads, characters feel like real human beings, etc. At the same time, the core story elements are pretty...bland I guess? Things we've seen 100 times over? The result is a show that has been nearly consistently somewhere between "fine" and "pretty good." It's good there are no real stinkers, but I'm still hoping the season has another Forget Me Not at some point.

 

A SOS message from the future to warn present day Disco crew about an impending disaster, how interesting ..

Also giving me some "Andromeda'' vibes. What if a future Rommie managed to record a message to present day Andromeda alerting Captain Hunt about the Nietzchean betrayal that started the collapse of the System Commonwealth? Would he do anything to alter the timeline? Quite intriguing indeed .

 

So the big secret is that they are running out of Dilithium. Isn’t that everyone? That is the whole premise of this season.
Not exactly a OMG moment.

 

IMO likely probably a predestination paradox. Discovery and its crew will spend the rest of the season to avoid the dark future predicted by Zora, only to find that the likelihood of it not happening is less than 0.01 percent.

Think of "Yesterday Enterprise'' where there is almost zero probability to avoid the Battle of Narendra III and the only way to achieve it is to convince Lt Yar to transfer to the Enterprise C (which was how the merging timeline issue was resolved).

I guess we'll have to stay tuned to see how the Disco crew would manage to avoid the dark fate. Does it involve Georgiou like many have predicted earlier based on what she has turned out to be this season? I guess we'll wait and see

 

At least we can actually see the ships now, unlike in Season 1.

The big issue is, as the canon nerds have pointed out, is since recrystallization of dilithium has been a thing, it shouldn't "run out." It can be used indefinitely as long as the ship doesn't go kablooey.

 

Honestly, I'm starting to get a bit of a Voyager vibe from Discovery. It's a show that ran screaming from its original premise, and has settled into a homey, if slightly beige show where most everyone gets along together and you can watch an episode of generic trek while you doze off on the couch.

 

Also...no Michael tears this week.

 

They couldn't afford to generate and animate Andorian antennae, so they simply wrote them out!

 

Unless the Burn did something to all dilithium in the galaxy that caused it to not be able to be recrystallized, or recrystallized long term.

 

Yeah, like Voyager, I'm finding the idea more interesting than the execution. I've enjoyed seeing the "far future," but the stories they're telling there haven't really engaged me. The Old West one, the previous Orion one and this one have all struck me as kinda pat and dull. So far, only the Adira intro has really stood out.

From a storytelling perspective, season two at this point was working better for me than what we've gotten from season three.

 

From a storytelling perspective, Season 2 was pretty good until after Project Daedalus, at which time the bottom fell out.

But it's frustrating, because the character aspects of the show are much, much better, while the storytelling is a step back.

 

About this point in season two, if I recall. Let's hope this holds together better. I've enjoyed the general arcs so far this season.