Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x13 - "That Hope Is You, Part 2"

Thanks for the clarification!

 

Clever move by the producers to add this insane stupid turbolift scene. It easily distracts from the
deficits of the Orion plot, and the even more crazy idea of how the burn happened.

In general I've the feeling that Discovery only consists out of heavy action scenes, and on the other side stories that are mostly boring and constructed. It seems there are no interesting scifi topics to be explored any more in the Trek universe. I don't feel like there was any episode in this season or the series at all that explored any scientific, technological, philosophical, ethical or political question in a visionary way.

I guess a slightly different burn plot could have easily be used to create connections to problems we are facing today with human made climate change for example (as some people had foreseen at the beginning of the season). But yeah a child crying, wiping out millions, causing empires to fall, seems like a story worth to be told.

 

"The Burp" Starfleet ships are knocked out of warp quadrant-wide while infant Su'kal is teething...

 

That's sorta one of the ways I was hoping it would go, personally:

-Intentional attack (could turn out to be another power, but miscalculating how bad the impact would be, or a smaller group thinking they could take over in the chaos)

-Environmental, sorta super long term version of the 'warp 5 speed limit' thing, where eventually they just did serious damage

-Experiment gone wrong, the 'flew too close to the sun' sorta line.

I'd have loved any of those over an almost throwaway 'scared kid in a holodeck got scared and screamed' resolution. The trillions of lives lost, entire society/culture destroyed, instant dark ages almost... doesn't really play well with 'oopsies'.

Kinda like if you're looking for a reason for a pandemic, you want to write about an intentional release, or failed attempt to cure cancer. 'Dude ate a bat' isn't where you want to pin the whole narrative, even if it's occasionally the sad truth...

 

For a while I wondered how the Ni'Var fleet could get there so quickly. Then I realized the Romulans probably came up with a scientifically questionable not-really-safe-for-use-by-biological-beings warp drive that will tear apart the fabric of the galaxy during Season 4.

 

The ep was pretty good, I thought. Was quite satisfied with the conclusion. Feeling excited for next year.
-The turbo lift sequence was a disappointment as it felt added to the ep in order to wind up in a game at some point in the future. Same as the equally (plot) useless corridor chase in fighter planes or the desert chase in Nemesis.
-Admiral Vance- I agree he's the best Admiral since Ross on DS9. I hope he's more hands-on next year.
-Several people here have speculated about Saru as a diplomat. I agree. Having him as a Federation-builder would be a great spot for the character. He'd essentially take over the "roving diplomat" role Sarek had in S1 and 2.
-Since Tilly is now in Blue, I'm assuming she's going to science officer for more seasoning, and this makes sense.
-They should put in a male 32nd century officer as Burnham's FO. A character like that would be a good counter-balance to Burnham. I'd also make him older to age-balance the cast a bit better. Almost everyone on the show is on the younger end.
*better idea: Make him a KLINGON. THAT oughta make the crew dramatically uncomfortable at first.
-Love the uniforms. Very TMP-evocative and an obvious evolution from the TNG era.

 

No crewmembers died during the ship takeover, did they? Not even the one that was introduced out of nowhere.

 

Just many robots. The Sphere data was pretty useless for an advanced AI.

 

It wasn't that stupid of an idea.
If you think about it, Voyager probably expanded on the idea of ablative armor technology and found a way to create a highly Borg resistant variant that was difficult for them to penetrate compared to energy shields... and its also easy to just materialize it from those large emitters along the hull (which probably also repair the armor when its not used - aka, the damaged version is decomposed to energy which is then rematerialized into completely repaired version when its reactivated - essentially those emitters act as large pattern-buffer/replicators/transporters.. but for the armor technology itself).

Although as you say, the technology WAS assimilated by the Borg in 'Endgame'... technically.
If you also recall, by assimilating that technology, the Queen also assimilated a Neurolithic Pathogen which completely destroyed Unimatrix One and the Queen herself (who also had trouble establishing and maintaining a viable connection to the rest of the Collective - because it was in chaos - so, for all we know, only that 1 sphere which pursued Voyager [and eventually got destroyed by Voyager from the inside out] had the knowledge of assimilated armor technology along with the Queen - and both were destroyed - for all we know, any recently assimilated technology from that encounter might have been 'deleted' from the Collective as a self-preservation mechanism - a sort of restoring to an earlier save point).

 

It was the most plot armour in the history of plot armour. It was so OP the franchise essentially now ignores it. It was like if Superman became a Federation starship.

 

It's interesting to see some people thought this ending "stuck the landing". In a season that had most of Discovery's best writing and potential, I think the last episode totally dropped the ball on several fronts. It felt like a regression to some of Discovery's worst writing. I only hope this was due to a rushed schedule and uncertainty about being renewed, and that season four picks up on the more positive momentum that got started this season.

Polygon's review does a pretty good job of describing some of the bigger problems with this ending.
https://www.polygon.com/tv/22220673/star-trek-discovery-season-3-finale-recap-review

 

You don't even want to know about the TARDIS tech toilets. They're smellier on the inside.

 

Voyager had the best plot armor.

 

Voyager vs the Cube in part 1 of Unimatrix Zero where they take an absolute pounding even leaking plasma from a Nacelle, hull breaches and Paris saying the Warp Core was being targeted and the shields are still up in the special effect scenes + Warp Drive works at end

Don't forget the USS Defiant in Sacrifice of Angels where the ship takes sustained damage for extended periods of times and the shields remain up. In the finale "What You Leave Behind" (SFX scenes show Breen Torpedo's directly hitting the hull and bypassing the shields meaning they were down) and I don't think they drop any lower than 30% in the dialogue.

 

I think they got it all wrong. Instead of the energy fired at a ship dropping the shields,it should be harnessed and stored. That the more you'd fire at a ship the stronger it would become. The worst part is that it's part of ST's reality. Once in a while, they encounter a being that instead of being weakened by the energy fired at it is made stronger by it. It would make sense to have your shields work on that principle but of course, it wouldn't be plot convenient.

 

That will buff right out.

 

I guess it just depends on how far you go to consider something purely technobabble. I mean, I think you could even consider the use of the term dilithium and its uses in Star Trek as technobabble to some degree. I honestly don't think the way it was portrayed here was even close to one of the worse uses of technobabble in Star Trek as a whole. But yes, everyone has a different opinion, and yours obviously is different than mine.

 

Solidly entertaining episode. Bernham's fist fight is the kind of fist fight you yearn for in these shows. Simple with not a lot of choreography and a few fun gimmicks. Michael coughing up little sparkly cubes was a nice touch. But, honestly, I find this whole thing of the burn being caused by an angry child to be both underwhelming and overdone in scifi. Oh the fury of a kid with powers it doesn't understand! I don't buy it. Neither do I buy putting a kid in a haunted house to protect them or having to lure that kid out with some kind of internal catharsis rather than just beaming him out or sedating him. And I'm annoyed that about six episodes - nearly half - of this season took place in a hologram/alt-history/mind world all with the same trappings.

Anyone else think blowing up the Viridians was an unnecessarily dangerous move that was pretty much done out of spite? They could have just jumped without risking harm to themselves. They killed all those people because they wanted to, not because they had to.

Lastly, man, those Nehru Jacket uniforms are the most stuffy, impractical things since the maroon bellboy outfits. They look hard to move in and are really poorly tailored. Not sexy in the least. I wasn't a fan of the Disco uniform with it's boring blue scheme and chainmail sides that tried to fake being a onesie jumpsuit, but at least they were form fitting. Now they're in boring grey and look like kids in their dad's suit.

Overall, this season was a major bust with maybe three great episodes. There wasn't a lot of stakes here. Future society looks not at all different from 23C society, technologically. There was almost no attempt to create a truly new and alien universe. This was the producer's chance to really reboot the show and make it their own and it's still star fleet and phasers and shields. But the chairs float and the consoles look like that thing with the metal pins you stick your face in.

Starfleet being around is the biggest disappointment. Disco having to take orders from a seriously feckless organization hidden behind a bubble was frustratingly dumb. The writers just didn't have the ovaries to dump it all and put the Discovery in a completely original situation. It's just more "check in with the admiral" tropes. Seriously, wouldn't you have much preferred a Disco crew forcing themselves to live up to their ideals instead of having to rebel against an authority figure with no real authority? It reminds me of the promise in Last Jedi that the force would have an all new interpretation, and then Rise of Skywalker doubled down on the same dichotomy. What makes it worse is that Strange New Worlds will be doing the traditional Trek thing. There's no reason not to have a show that doesn't.

 

I think if there is one thing I'll remember about this season after I've gone senile and forgotten everything else, it's the shit apples...

 

Season 2 had very little action.