Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x11 - "Su'Kal"

That anyone can mutate to cause faster than light speed destruction is a bit unbelievable even for Star Trek. Su'kal might as well have ascended into being a Q.

I mean we're talking Dark Phoenix from X-Men levels of power here, and even at her height she only caused destruction in one solar system, not countless ones all across the galaxy.

Agreed. There's no radiation protection advancement in the last 900 years. No synths or holos to do the away missions for them (what happened to all the advancement in Picard?)

Cloaking still requires massive power that you can't jump while cloaked. Detmer has no medical advances to remove her implant (I'll make an exception for the Kenneth Mitchell character said to be coming as his character's condition is a real life circumstance and not a writer's choice and we're happy to have him on the show even while he deals with his awful disease).

 

That's what they expect you to do, but Tilly and Osyraa were both playing 4D Chess here. The last place the enemy would check would be the place you cloaked in the first place.

 

I wasn't clear. I feel like the expectation of the tech is to make it magic and that our intrepid band should never be caught unawares thus killing drama.

Its frustrating.

 

MetaPhasic Shields have been a thing since the 24th Century and it's special feature is able to withstand heavy enough Radiation that StarShips can literally get incredibly close to a Star and not kill off the crew as long as it has enough power to keep the Shields up.

Yet the computer didn't suggest using MetaPhasic Shields when dealing with a heavily Radiated Nebula?

I thought the advanced AI was supposed to be helpful.

More like, in 900 years, they haven't designed automated defenses against boarding parties.
There's ALOT of time for StarFleet to learn from and experience when dealing with intruders.

Yet the Emerald Chain & Osyrra literally waltzed on board with the Computer doing jack squat.

 

They can't even lock out the main computer like in First Contact here. If Zora were at all helpful she would have beamed Osyraa into space. I thought she was bent on protecting the Sphere Data, yet she took no such protective actions here.

Instead of the "radiation" term they should have named the harmful energy as tachyon rays or something. Su'kal was doing faster than light stuff anyway.

 

Zora is still evolving I'd guess.

 

Maybe Zora has not evolved to that point yet. Or the show is waiting to surprise us in the finale.

 

I thought it was fun.

I enjoyed the holo environment and the Kelpian stuff.

Su'Kal being the source of the Burn is a pretty silly... but I'm pleased that it isn't some big evil plot.

Saru needs to come to the realization that he has no aptitude for- or interest in- being a Captain.

The evil Emerald Chain lady still doesn't do much for me.

 

Ah.
Well, no, I wasn't referring to the premise of making technology 'magic'... simply to show proper advancement via logical extrapolation from what we've seen in previous shows and also injecting real life projections of just how technologically advanced civilizations would be for a combination of multiple alien species working together, and then INTEGRATING the drama into that setting.

Otherwise, there's 0 point in making a dramatic story in a setting where you ignore or regress everything that makes it sci-fi in the first place - might as well drop the advanced technology and make a different show all together NOT set in the far away future where its constantly repeated that things advanced so much.

 

At the risk of sounding cranky and cliché but it sounds like Star Trek to me.

Look, I get it-there is the expectation that 900 years technology should have evolved to a certain point and apparently the fact that it hasn't is a source of consternation for people. I'm trying my best to be respectful of that viewpoint.

That said, there is a big but for me here. Star Trek has never done technology well. I have that whole joke about the Indiana Jones wharehouse of tech were stuff goes to be forgotten. Maybe I'm not imaginative enough or whatnot, but Discovery feels right at home with Trek in that technology serves the speed of plot, and not the plot serving the technology.

See, again, not trying to be argumentative but I have yet to see "proper" defined in this context. Star Trek is notoriously bad, unbelievably so, of demonstrating this idea of technology evolving, much less a group of planets working together.

I don't see the regression. I see Star Trek.

Mileage will vary. Apologies if I sound irritated.

ETA: I think my biggest frustration stems from the idea that the technology takes such a huge point of prominence in a story that is largely about characters working together. The technology is a backdrop. Is it really straining this story so much that it is the talking point rather than what the characters are doing?

 

Well I liked it...

 

I don’t think your position is unreasonable, but, at the same time, one of the big appeals of moving the show 900 years into the future is seeing how things have changed. It’s almost an obligation for the writers to explore this.

 

I really enjoyed this one and was fully invested in not only the drama but threat of the Emerald Chain toward the end.

My only issue with it was Tilly basically figuring out, without even a discussion being had, that Osyraa wants Discovery's spore drive. This would have landed much better, imo, had there been a scene a few episodes back of Osyraa scheming with her villainous thugs to take the ship. Without evidence, Tilly just says that what she's going to do and no one even questions it. And it turns out, that's exactly what Osyraa wants. The same thing occurred last season when we find out what will happen if the sphere data merged with Control; it would attain sentience. Pike says this is what would happen and no one even questions it and no evidence to support it is even brought forward.

While I like that we finally got a demonstration of the Emerald Chain's power, I still maintain that it and Osyraa are just uncompelling, run-of-the-mill bad guys with no endgame. What is their ultimate plan? Is that going to be told to us eventually? Or are we just supposed to deduce it's to harness all the dilithium in the galaxy (and now Discovery's spore drive along with it)?

 

Its not unprecedented for Trek to showcase powerful humanoids that have a pretty far reach.
Sure, the Q have thus far been portrayed as having abilities (probably technological in nature) that allow them full control over space, matter and time on at least galactic scale... but they are likely universe-wide).
A Dowd from TNG 'Survivors' though comes really close to a Q... but is several steps below. We don't know if he has control over time itself, but his ability to reshape reality in the far reaches of the galaxy at least is impressive when he killed all the Hushnock everywhere .

For this Kelpien to develop this mutation during gestation... well, its just 1 ability, and we've seen hyper-evolution of Tom Paris from just going Warp 10 (though that was more of a combination of universal soup of anomalies and environments interacting with his body via epigenetics most likely) - and SF had no way to account for every single anomaly in existence after all to adapt their shields to... so there IS precedent for really fast mutations in Trek.

As for him causing FTL destruction of dilithium... well, it probably occurred via subspace channels that allow excessively fast transmissions - think maybe faster than Hypersubspace transmissions which SF was able to send in real-time over 16 000 Ly's of space when communicating with Voyager in real time)... maybe this Kelpiens' effect works along those bandwidths but faster still to the point where it would have Galaxy Wide repercussions (or at least, it would encompass a sizeable portion of the Milky Way).

Yup... and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

 

They shouldn't have bothered. It was a piss poor decision because of the simple fact that imaging 900 year plus technological development is rather difficult in the context of a shorter season.

I guess that's where I'm at. I don't have an expectation of Trek doing better because Trek has never done this in a satisfactory way. So, to me, the expectation has it a more unreasonable level if that is a source of ire in every episode. Even if they explore 32nd century tech it won't be believable. So, I'll stick with unbelievable at this point.

 

Well, we've seen a steady progression/expansion of technologies in use from 23rd to the 24th century (even though they are more along the lines of incremental improvements that would be more fitting with passing of maybe 10 or 20 years like it happened in reality, not 78-80 years).

I don't see an issue in doing the same with Discovery... except on a much large scale.
Right now it feels very lazy.

 

Im 15 mins in and Burnham has already been screaming at Saru on the bridge then worst of all questioning his ability to be objective despite being the least objective person in Trek history and then questioning if he knows the weight of captaincy despite never being one. Ive had to take a break now cause Starfleets worst ever XO is giving Tilly pointers on the job.

Fair play to Vance with his WTF look when Saru said " first officer ensign"

 

It didn't feel expanded. It felt like "BAM, here's "THE FUTRE!" (choir signs). It took front and center stage that was very off putting in TNG and it's irritating.

I would love to see someone send in a write of technologies expected for this time in Discovery to the writers. I would genuinely enjoy that because there are so many assumptions of what technology "should" do that I find so off putting. But, maybe the writers haven't thought about it. So, maybe they need a nudge in that direction.

But, right now, I care more about the crew than the tech. Mileage, etc.

 

In that moment I kept saying, "Ok, now, raise the shields, Tilly, just to be safe. Don't make the mistake Kirk did with the Reliant."

 

Crikes I miss Lorca... He would have spaced Osyrra and her lackeys faster than you can say "Engage".