Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x02 - "Anomaly"

6.5

The episode feels padded. It seems like the plot strained to give the characters opportunities to emote. The interactions between Stamets and Book were nice, but they serviced the former more than the latter. Loved the walk and talk between Saru and Tilly. The anti-grav scenes looked silly, imo. Oh, look, another problem solved by a surfing metaphor!

The Adira-Gray story is generally good--I hope that the discussion of joining Gray to a synthetic body is actually foreshadowing problems. I am bugged by the characterization of Stamets and Culber (moreso in the previous episode than this one). In the context of the show, members of Starfleet don't put their personal attachments so far ahead of their duty. Worf is the one character who repeatedly has personal issues, but this leads to increasing strain with the CO. I hope that one of them gets busted by Burnham.

 

Above average for a Disco.

Some great action bits. But I can't stand the flamethrowers that the SFX team has installed on the sets. They take me out of the drama whenever they go off. It's really distracting for me.

I do like that they slowed down for once and dealt with the aftermath of Book's Krypton. That they dealt with the grief, pain, and trauma. Although, Disco is a series that's really steeped in trauma, especially in Burnham's overall arc.

So I guess Stamets and Burnham have made up? Cause he's joking about it. Once again, the show sets up an interesting conflict and totally just throws it out the airlock. Too soon?

Love Culber as Doctor-Counselor. He does have a light touch.

So are there no more synthetic lifeforms in the 29th Century? I might have missed something since I watched the episode when it dropped late last night.

 

You don't need technology. You just fly anti clockwise around the sun

 

The Synth ban might last a LOT longer than we thought. Unless we just haven't seen any AI officers or citizens just yet.

 

Enjoyable episode, even if not a particularly noteworthy one.

loved the music, very in the spirit of the Abrams movies.

the new flamethrowers on the bridge really ARE annoying.

Not much else to say...here we are with yet another galaxy-spanning treat and yet another mystery.

7

 

From what I recall, they never said there were no synths. They only said that transferring organic minds into synth bodies to extend longevity never developed into a thing because after Picard attempts to repeat the process met with failure.

(minor spoilers for Picard Season 2)

Spoiler

I'm going to venture that the process would've failed with Picard too, but that Q somehow intervened unnoticed just so that Picard can stay alive for the events of Picard Season 2 to happen

 

Yes, it was nice to see the loss of artificial gravity. We've heard reports of various decks losing gravity without showing it a million times during the TNG area.

 

it could be the race of machines that equipped V’Ger!

 

True. We never saw their planet other than as stored data within the V'Ger ship's memory.

 

I haven't seen it discuss lately, or maybe I missed it, but what is up with Tilly? I surely hope it is not treated as casually as Detmer's situation was last season.

 

Hunting the whales to extinction happened. Kirk had to undo that.

And I agree with whoever said the Adira/Gray lovefest is too much. I'm here to watch Star Trek, not Love Boat.

 

Here's the exact lines:

Gray:
- This is 800-year-old technology?

Adira:
- Maybe I should get a synth body when I die, too?
- We could live forever:

Culber:
- Well, not likely.
- But the process was attempted a number of times after Dr. Soong first used it on a… a StarFleet Admiral
- Picard was his name… but the success rate was so low that eventually people just stopped trying.

Adira:
- What… Should we be worried?

Culber:
- Well, the fact that Gray's conciousness has already survived transfer to a new host once seems to be a good sign.
- But we should ask Guardian Xi once the synthetic body's ready.

So the question I want to ask is what rate of success is so low that people would stop trying if they're on or near their death bed?

Assuming they're trying to stay alive when near death and not just want to pass on?

I'm going to throw a percentage of ≤ 9% success rate for transferring one's conciousness from their original organic mind to a new Synth body. The success rate will vary based on the state of the original mind and the circumstances upon transferring.

What low percentage % rate of success do you think would be needed that most people would just give up?

 

It may not be so much that it doesn't work outright, but that the synth that results develops insanity i.e. Ira Graves.

 

Enjoyed this episode well enough, but not as much as last week. The anomaly seems to have some kind of intelligence behind it. Whether it’s a living thing or being caused/controlled by a living thing remains to be seen. I do think one thing Discovery needs is a brand new alien big bad. Every show up to Enterprise has introduced at least one new big bad alien species for the series and I feel that’s something that Kurtzman’s series have lacked (until Prodigy).

 

Anything greater then 0% makes no sense given the whole "will otherwise die" part.

 

I don't think Ira Graves insanity was a product of being in Data's body by itself.
He had to suppress Data's personality (which was probably straining) and Ira DID struggle with adjusting to Data's body initially (basically he had no mental support to help him during the transition - and the fact he occupied another life form's body without permission).

So, no.
Disco goes and does it again... handwaving away longevity tech (even though its not the only one) by saying there was a low success rate because a consciousness needs to be able to survive in a new host?
I mean, you're transferring the consciousness into an EMPTY vessel... there's not much of a potential for rejection here... unless the biological nature of the synth body is incompatible with some people's consciousness... which is exceedingly unlikely.

Transfer of consciousness would imply you scanned their body and brain before hand and adapted the synth body to what the consciousness previously occupied... therefore, there should be no rejection.

Works whenever we need to see it, but large scale... forget it. Writers apparently don't want UFP having these technologies so they make up a 'reason' for why they wouldn't work and artifiically keep things 'low tech'.
Stupid stupid stupid... but oh well.

And yeah, I kinda have to agree that a survival higher than 0% is better than nothing, because if the alternative is DEATH, what the heck do you have to lose by trying?

Poor excuse - also, 24th century medicine was able to bring people back from the death (even before nanoprobes)... 32nd century = once you scan as dead... you're dead apparently... no going back from that (heck, even Grey didn't really survive a simple impalement... even though such a thing should/would be minor for 24th century... and those medical dones were there virtually instantly).

Oh yeah... this is Disco... DRAMA trumps over everything else.

 

It amuses me greatly that the people on Discovery are so dense they can't even think to just have a couple monitoring probes follow the anomaly around and announce it's location.

 

Oh, I don’t know about that. Disco had the Klingons in season 1, Section 31 in season 2, the Orions in season 3 and now this... whatever it is for s4. And don’t forget the Pakleds in LDS!

 

Yeah, I kinda asked myself... why not launch a probe or a hundred?
But that's Disco writers for you. Drama over everything else... that's why they handwaived every tech under the sun to make the 32nd century appear ridiculously stupidly unadvanced because they apparently can't write good stories in a technologically advanced setting.

Oh and, it seems programmable matter works just fine around the anomaly (becauseit was able to maintain the 'tether' pretty easily).

 

It was also hilarious that Tilly couldn't connect their own actions with the anomaly's change in direction given that was the only new variable.