Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x05 - "The Examples"

[fireproof78]

Been seeing some comments online about how the guest stars are stealing the focus and thunder away from the main characters this season.

IMO there's nothing wrong with having strong guest stars. That just means you have good casting and good scripts which are able to develop viewer investment in the guest characters. Good shows often have good guest stars.

I'd rather not.

 

[Mr Awe]

Book's an empath, so he's intuitive about stuff like this. They have shown Saru to be perceptive as well but I guess he just missed it. Stamets would have never picked up on it, not in a million years

Yeah, like I said, I get Stamets. But not Saru!

 

[Mr Awe]

I know people like to imagine Kurtzman is the source of anything they don't like about the new shows, but I really suspect that has even less basis in reality than blaming Berman for every single thing they didn't like about TNG–ENT (though I suppose plenty of people do that as well). For most of the issues people find, Kurtzman's main folly (if there was one on his part) is probably not shooting it down rather than being the one to originate it.

Actually, the funny thing is that it really was Berman who was a big problem for TNG and beyond! Don't know about Kurtzman though.

 

[NCC-73515]

The anomaly knocks objects aside with blunt gravity.

Gravity attracts...

 

[Char Kais]

Once Harberts and Berg took over, they got to wondering "why" Lorca was militaristic, and decided to make him from the MU.

I never understood why a rebel/insurgent from the mirror universe was supposed to be the bad guy, but the genocidal space Hitler should deserve sympathy from the audience.
To this day I don't understand what the writers were thinking.

 

[XCV330]

I never understood why a rebel/insurgent from the mirror universe was supposed to be the bad guy, but the genocidal space Hitler should deserve sympathy from the audience.
To this day I don't understand what the writers were thinking.

A redemption arc would have been much better for Isaacs, if he'd been willing to stay on the series. Maybe they didn't realize how much of a scene stealer he'd be. Once he got Cornwell captured, that was not really possible, (there's still a way to bring back Pike, of course). At least with Anson Mount's appearance, when he stole the show they recognized the clamor, and got him, Romijn and Peck into their own series.

 

[Char Kais]

PROS:
5. We didn't have to gut through any of Adira and Gray

CONS:
1. I'm tired of Book being a baby.
3. I miss Tilly, but in all honesty, this episode felt tighter and more focused because without Tilly, Adira and Gray, they could focus on 4-5 main characters and the 2 key guests, and it felt much more natural and cohesive than when they try to give everyone something to do.
4. I've started to dread the obligatory Michael and Book scenes. I can't explain why...but I wish they had made a different choice here other than "let's have the captain do missions with her boyfriend rather then members of the crew"

You don't like Tilly, Adira and Gray?
And you don't like that Book is nothing more than Burnham's boyfriend?
That is dangerously close to Fandom Menace thinking!

The absence of Tilly, Adira, and Gray was noticeable and one of two positive things for me in this episode.

The second positive thing was the end scene with Book and the Rodney McKay-style scientist in the bar.
In this scene, Book was not Burnham's boyfriend and not in therapy.
It's hard to put it into words, but this scene, the interaction between Book and Tarka, felt very different than the usual interaction between Discovery characters. Very un-Discovery-like.

EDIT: My biggest worry is, if they are going with this "episodic problem of the week overlayed on a light serialized storyline" format (which it seems they are)...what happens when SNW comes on the air and is basically exactly the same thing? I thought the whole idea of multiple shows at once was to have them all be distinctive from each other in significant ways. DSC S4 has felt more what I would expect SNW to feel like.

The "episodic problem of the week overlaid on a light serialized storyline" structure results in some of the worst pacing issues.

I can not stand the pacing of Discovery. It's too slow and too fast at the same time.


They either rush through the story, sometimes adding unnecessary urgency in form of ticking clocks to it (two this episode! A and B story), or it is too slow because we either deal with boring melodrama or with side quests that have nothing to with solving the big mystery, while the big mystery still looms over the story.

We had two episodes where we didn't get any information about the DMA, one episode without the DMA at all, and then, boom, the DMA is artificial, here is a mini version of the DMA controller, let's do an experiment, during a time-critical evacuation, do it NOW NOW NOW. I don't like that pacing.

The prisoner A plot was such a wasted opportunity. Instead of digging into topics like crime and punishment, guilt and forgiveness, first, the writers added a useless action scene and then we had the urgency, because of the DMA, looming over the story (there are more problems with this plot, but this is just the problem I had with pacing).

Remember DS9 Duet? An entire episode focused on one thing. No larger mystery looming over the story, no rush, no fake urgency, no ticking clock, no useless action sequence.


This is not a new structure for Discovery. They already did the "episodic problem of the week overlayed on a light serialized storyline" in season 3 and this is one of the many problems I had with season 3.

First, we had the "find the Federation" sub-story, we went to Earth, then to Trill.
We hat the seed ship, scavenger planet, Book's planet, Vulcan and Mirror Universe episodes, during which the Burn was at best a background story. Burnham had already collected the black boxes, and Tilly and Adia did some calculations in the background.
The mission Vulcan was nominally about getting data to solve the origin of the Burn, but in reality, it was about Michale Burnham, her mental state, and her relations ship to Vulcan.

Solving the mystery of the Burn was drawn out piecemeal work.

The trailer for both seasons 3 and 4 introduced a big mystery to the season. That is how the audience got introduced to each season. The big mystery is front and center.
This mystery looms over every story, no matter how much the writers try to add episodic stories to the season. With 13 episodes a season, an episode that does not move us closer to solving the mystery will be perceived as slow, boring, and as filler. Especially when these episodes focus on characters that people are not invested in and with the focus on melodrama.

According to Akiva Goldsman SNW will have season-long "character" arcs.
(Picard season 1 had similar pacing issues).

 

[jackoverfull]

Remember DS9 Duet? An entire episode focused on one thing. No larger mystery looming over the story, no rush, no fake urgency, no ticking clock, no useless action sequence.

duet was one of the best episodes in Trek ever and the kind of thing modern Trek seems afraid of attempting. Its only fault was the totally unnecessary assassination at the end, it would have been interesting to keep the cardassian around for future episodes.

 

[Sci]

CONS:
1. I'm tired of Book being a baby.

Book is not being a baby. He lost his entire planet and everyone on it, including his family. Grief is a process that can take months or years to resolve. I lost my grandmother in November 2019 and I lost my mother in August 2021, and I completely get where Book is coming from and find it accurately reflects my experiences (which are still ongoing).

 

[ToddCam]

Book is not being a baby. He lost his entire planet and everyone on it, including his family. Grief is a process that can take months or years to resolve. I lost my grandmother in November 2019 and I lost my mother in August 2021, and I completely get where Book is coming from and find it accurately reflects my experiences (which are still ongoing).

Thanks, Sci. I lost my mother in June 2017 and I still have long periods of struggling to feel anything at all and occasional bursts of despair where life seems not worth living. I think grief is something that may never be resolved, and is just something you adjust to.

 

[cooleddie74]

I lost my Dad in 1998 and my Mom in 2008 and yeah, you never get completely over grief. You just learn how to adjust to and live with it.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

It was also good to see Rhys have a little more screen time, but, I found that scene between him and Michael where he's describing the tornado just so awkward. It wasn't the actor, but, it just didn't seem like the place to have that conversation.

A very cheesy and unnecessary scene. The script just felt unnatural and you could see that in the rigid way the actors had to read it out

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

You know it's possible the change was forced on them by CBS. Between this and the new Pike show I wonder if their was a order to make Trek more stand alone again. Across the board. It will be interesting to see if this plays out on Picard as well.

Maybe they finally realized they were hopeless at the arc thing

 

[Amasov]

A very cheesy and unnecessary scene. The script just felt unnatural and you could see that in the rigid way the actors had to read it out

I definitely cringed when I saw it. Maybe if it was held until the end of the episode it would've worked better. If Michael was in the mess hall. Maybe Rhys is there as well. And she joins him and thanks him for his help and THEN he mentions all of it.

IMO, it's better served when delivered in a quiet more introspective moment.

 

[SJGardner]

Book is not being a baby. He lost his entire planet and everyone on it, including his family. Grief is a process that can take months or years to resolve.

I'm just happy that there's finally a Star Trek series where grief isn't handled with the mourning character looking wistfully out into space before the credits roll, then showing up for duty the very next episode acting like nothing ever happened. And especially when someone loses their entire homeworld... why do some people seriously expect Book to just shrug, collect himself and go on with his life with steely determination?

 

[Char Kais]

I'm just happy that there's finally a Star Trek series where grief isn't handled with the mourning character looking wistfully out into space before the credits roll, then showing up for duty the very next episode acting like nothing ever happened.

You get trauma and grief!
And you get trauma and grief!
Every character gets trauma and grief!

 

[antinoos]

Also Booker is an empath. He not only has to deal with own grief , but those suffering around him, too.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You get trauma and grief!
And you get trauma and grief!
Every character gets trauma and grief!

Seems a bit callous and unfeeling given what posters have shared. But hey. You do you.

 

[nic3636]

I'm just happy that there's finally a Star Trek series where grief isn't handled with the mourning character looking wistfully out into space before the credits roll, then showing up for duty the very next episode acting like nothing ever happened. And especially when someone loses their entire homeworld... why do some people seriously expect Book to just shrug, collect himself and go on with his life with steely determination?

Book's grief has been one of the highlights of S4. It gives ‎David Ajala an opportunity to show off his considerable acting talent and it's been well executed. It's not overdone or melodramatic and the writers have done a really good job tying his grief into each episode's plot.

 

[DEWLine]

And Booker's only had...weeks, at most, per the story thus far?