Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x01 - "Kobayashi Maru"

TOS definitely did. But TOS never had the buddy nature of it screw things up in such an unprofessional manner. There's a difference there.

 

Well, they wanted Book to be a regular character but the darn guy kept wanting to return home. So, they had to blow it up to keep him on Discovery!

 

Warp it! Warp it real good!

 

I think somebody would've sued because of that catch phrase is too similar to a famous one.

 

Book and Michael did not mess things up in an unprofessional manner, and frankly I seem to remember plenty of informal language on Kirk's part during meetings with aliens.

 

Burnham’s catch phrase should obviously be “yum yum” in honor of her ex-security chief and Georgiou.

 

Burnham’s catch phrase should be “Geronimo!!”

or alternately:
"Light 'er up"

 

Star Trek Discovery is currently the No. 3 show on Paramount+:



Star Trek Discovery lost its second place to NCIS.
These are not some Paramount+ exclusive NCIS episodes.
These are the already broadcasted and archived episodes of NCIS from CBS.

More people are watching old episodes from a generic, run-of-the-mill, low-budget police drama than episodes from the high-budget, high-profile, high-end (supposedly) flagship show from Paramount+.

 

My thoughts on Kobayashi Maru [a little rant]

Overall rating: 6

Discovery frustratingly continues its trends from season 3. It looks better than ever and there is some good character progression for the top-level characters (Michel, Saru, Tilly), and even some for the newcomers (Book), but precious little for anyone else. And the big drawbacks remain: non-sensical developments because the plot needs to happen, or other stilly things that just break the immersion for me (bad dialog or poor character motivations or decision making). The main story of the station and Burnham’s Maru test are a good starting point for the season (and two that actually concluded – for now - within the episode, yay!), little threads got started for other character’s stories (Saru to leave Kaminar, Tilly to figure out her future, Book to have his family fridge’d, Adira to get Gray out of her head), and the gravity anomaly plot has at least been introduced. But I fear that like all the longer-form storytelling of Discovery seasons 1-3, these storylines are going to fall apart and or be unengaging, unearned, or poorly justified. I continue to struggle with Discovery, and fear that it will be the first Trek since Enterprise where I might actually not watch all the episodes as they air.

Good

· Showing the reintegrated Kelpian/Ba’ul civilization (and the Ba’ul don’t look like Armus retreads anymore!)
· The 32nd century starships look great and I like the new Archer shipyard (assuming the shipyard is basically one huge starship replicator given what we have seen on Prodigy and with the future programmable matter, etc.)
· Helping the non-Butterfly people: yay, exploration and discovery!
· For once a good reason for why an enemy can’t shoot straight (magnetic field is off kilter)
· Restarting Starfleet Academy

Ok
· New VR wall is good for cool, new environments but spacing is off – too much empty space with nothing interesting in the middle, just like how overall Discovery’s bridge spacing is bad
· Burnham’s away jacket – cool callback, but looks like she is in a biker gang when she is supposed to be being diplomatic – wear some Starfleet colors or something
· A little too much speechifying – maybe this is just the season opener, but while there were some good character moments too many scenes dragged with speechifying.
· The character moments for Book and Saru on their home planets were fine, but they would have been better served getting the A- or even B-story treatment in their own episodes [but new Trek is serialized Trek so we have to just get pieces here and there and hope it adds up to a complete story - though Discovery often fails at that.]
· It’s a cool bit of flying and a moment for the characters, but why do they need to match the spin of the station to beam over? [To fix this rotation plot hole and address the failure of the Heisenberg compensators plot hole they should have just had the gravitational anomaly mess up subspace such that no transporters work; then have Detmer fly the repair/rescue crew over in a shuttle. There were just so many better ways to do this.]
· I didn’t understand the whole Kobayashi Maru aspect of this episode, but part of what Agony_Boothb wrote (back on page 16) helped me. The title of the episode is wrong: the KM is supposed to teach officers that there is the potential for a no-win scenario (ignoring Kirk’s staunch disbelief in that idea), but that is not the point the Fed Pres and this episode were going for. The problem isn’t that Michael won’t accept that there are situations where you can’t win, the actual problem is that Michael has a savior complex and wants to do it all herself and not risk anyone else. If anything, the episode should be titled “Commander’s Qualification” because it’s more about Burnham being willing to accept giving the job to someone else qualified to do it and thereby being willing to risk failure and/or their death by trusting someone else to do the job. So, the reference to the KM is backward here, but the President’s concern about Michael is totally valid.

Bad
· Too few supporting crew: Stamets has no one in “engineering” helping him, Reno isn’t around, only Tilly and Adira beam over to a fix a whole station in crisis which only has 10 officers, and other than Adira there are no other 32nd century crew on Discovery
· No insights into the bridge officers; only Burnham and Tilly get anything to do in this episode
· The station commander was supposedly “freaking out” but other than pulling the phaser, was acting fairly calm?
· Does Burnham still have no first officer to prevent her from going on a dangerous away mission? I know they are from the 23rd century, but they are now part of the 32nd and they have supposedly been briefed on current protocols. When Burnham leaves the bridge, how come she doesn’t put anyone in charge? Do they do rock-paper-scissors for the position?
· Crisis on a Federation space station, and Admiral Vance (what, there are no 1-, 2-, or 3-star Admirals to give Burnham orders, so it always has to come from the CnC?) waits 2 hours to dispatch Discovery when Disco was just sitting around doing ceremonial stuff.
· Vance doesn’t even speak when the Federation President says she will tag along on a likely dangerous rescue mission – literally he doesn’t say anything to back up his captain? And since when is a Starfleet captain in a direct line of command with the President of the Federation? Vance can’t even muster up an order to make it official? [Also, the President has no staff, no secret service, and apparently no duties or obligations as she is able to trapse off on a mission of unknown length – is she on vacation? And sure, let’s all just stand around and debate politics while there is a station in distress out there.]
· Future technology is still composed of rocks (Book’s ship) and now comes with regularly timed flame shooters and spark generators (Discovery)
· Dialog:
Fed President: Are you sure?
Burnham: Are you questioning my command decision?
Fed President: I was not implying any question. [yes, you were; you asked “are you sure?”!!!]
· The camera, even on static shots at Fed HQ or Discovery, constantly bobbing and weaving
· Awkward dialog: new propulsion technology introduced as if we had already heard of it
· The ship apparently has one Heisenberg compensator that when damaged kills all transporters, so much for all the upgrades and that personal transporter tech
· Book sees Kwejian’s moon being destroyed but runs to Discovery before even looking back at his home planet???

Nitpicks
· Stamets should be assisting develop the new spore drives, right? And this goes back to season 3: in 900 years, no one developed a different FTL drive that worked? Even if it was less efficient than a dilithium-based warp drive, who would care about that after the Burn?
· Neither Michael nor the Fed Pres should have any real knowledge of the KM other than what they have read or had others tell them. With no Academy, the KM hasn’t even been a thing for more than a century.
· The Fed Pres doesn’t have any business deciding who should captain new ships, even some new flagship. That should be Vance’s job but since he is already buddies with Michael, they had to introduce a new, more powerful foil and they messed up the logic of this being the President’s decision.
· The non-Butterfly people’s satellites need matter/antimatter reactors to work but wouldn’t they have all exploded during the Burn? And isn’t it a little convenient that worker drones can just fly up to these structures and randomly insert some dilithium into an exterior port and everything magically works? No authorization needed, no configuring or calibration, no one has to even turn the system on, it just magically works? And I guess they just kept antimatter on board the satellites for 125 years just in case some helpful drone came by to drop off some perfectly configured dilithium?
· Why did everyone on the Discovery get promoted at the same time?

But what you can do is improve how the brain works in terms of recall. We do stuff like forget good events and dwell on bad events (as a "be aware for danger" thing). Better recall might help us remember what good things have happened to us to balance things out and improve our responses to others, and to simply help us accurately remember and incorporate all facts for decision making. We could also improve feelings of empathy or other emotions, this might help humanity avoid dehumanizing others, etc. There are a lot of simple mechanical/functional improvements that could improve our morality and judgement - after all, all mental functions are based in physical brain structure and functionality.

 

NCIS is a ratings juggernaut that regularly tops both the broadcast and streaming ratings with new and old episodes, so you're not really making much of a dig there that doesn't also apply to the rest of the franchise besides TNG, which is the only Trek show that was consistently in the top tier of viewership each week.

All those things you describe; generic, run-of-the-mill, the Olds lap that stuff up like Ambrosia. You mix a military and police procedural and make it as bland and unchallenging as possible like the television equivalent of oatmeal, and promise that America is gonna come out on top and maybe kick some terrorist ass each week, you're golden. They don't want no making peace with no butterfly people or none of that hippie shit.

 

Good job spinning #3 as bad. On my planet, #3 on a Top 10 list is considered good. Whatever you think of the show -- I'm not a fan of it -- NCIS is a juggernaut, like it or not, and always has been.

Science-Fiction doesn't have the same draw as something that's not science-fiction. Everyone here knows this. You know it too. So I'd say DSC is doing pretty well in a situation like that.

As Locutus said, only TNG ever got the equivalent of NCIS type ratings. That's one of the reasons why we have Star Trek: Picard now, and not Star Trek: Sisko, Star Trek: Janeway, or Star Trek: Archer. So if you're going to level this against DSC, you might as well be levelling this against every Star Trek series that's not TNG.

Whenever people try to do this, it never works. Because you forget this also applies to Star Trek series you like and not just the ones you don't.

 

Good job.

 

Nice to see that LD is still in the Top 10 even though it's been on break for about a month.

 

I wouldn't sweat the President character. The civilian government has been sharing bunks with Starfleet for so long that obviously the leader of the former has some pretty direct influence over the leader of the latter - especially as she or he has had nothing better to do for the past century, there being no real civilian Federation around.

I wouldn't sweat her lackey being Vance and nobody but Vance, either. The Discovery isn't a starship among starships: it's Starfleet's one strategic asset, naturally kept at the beck and call of the top dog, rather than slaved to some lowly Chief of Starfleet Operations.

The dumbing down of tech is awkward, but at least it helps keep the Discovery sufficiently more impressive than ships a thousand years more advanced than her...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Love it, but depending on how it's said Detmer might file a compliant with HR.

 

"I need warp 5 and I cannot lie"

 

So? This impacts my enjoyment how?

 

You're supposed to hate it. Hate Trek, hate Discovery and most important of all hate Paramount+ and CBS for daring to have Discovery at number 3 below a run of the mill police procedural of all things.

 

My mother likes those two shows, but not Star Trek. Must be her fault.

 

Tell me more about your mother.

*flips open notebook.*