Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x07 - "Erigah"

[The Scottish Nightmare]

Anyone else guess it was the Badlands from Book’s vision?
I still don’t get the fuss about the progenitor’s tech. It just sounds like Genesis tech which is centuries old and most alien races will know about it now.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Except if they had followed Vance’s original idea, and put distance between the Breen and Moll and L’ak (and maybe go somewhere in the galaxy that knows Breen medicine) maybe you delay the forces of the Breen primarch, have time to convince Moll and L’ak that you’ll protect them and won’t use them as bargaining chips, and you avoid all of the fuck ups of the third act. Burnham lied about having Moll in custody when they were trying to get her to calm down and come back to sick bay. What’s the difference between her lying about their whereabouts and Starfleet lying to the Breen about it, at least for a while, to attempt negotiation?

But the plot demands that Moll and L’ak be there so they can act like idiots, setting up the Breen joining the search for the super tech.

Also, does cloaking not work anymore? Both Discovery and Starfleet HQ had cloaking tech. Why not just jump away, cloak the ship, and use old-fashioned warp drive?

All of that is just kicking the can further down the road. Burnham knew what the Breen Dreadnaught was potentially capable of from her glimpse into the Future. It's also mentioned multiple times that the last time the Breen violated Federation territory, they immediately attacked a planet. Having L'ak onboard a Federation Starship where the Breen could at least talk to him, but also couldn't attack without risk of killing him was the lesser of two evils. It kept the Breen focused on Federation HQ and necessitated the risk that the Breen would have just started carpet bombing planets to draw the Federation out of hiding. Also, if the Federation has been dragged into a shooting war they had the chance for further reinforcements to arrive and consolidate the fleet. That's far better alternative than taking a chance of the Breen finding Federation HQ or Discovery out in the middle of nowhere, where the rest of the Federation Fleet can't provide aid in time.

Neither solution is perfect but I think it was better for the Federation to stand it's ground with Breen than to just delay a confrontation which may have ended up far worse.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

So did Star Trek, with the relaunch books in the late 90s, early 2000s. And the powers that be tossed it all in the dustbin because of the new shows.

That's just the way it goes unfortunately and it has always been this way. The writers of Star Trek novels know that their work is non-canon when they write it. While it was fun having a cohesive novelverse post-DS9, it was far from perfect and there are definitely some plot choices I am glad are in the bin.

 

[Rahul]

Anyone else guess it was the Badlands from Book’s vision?
I still don’t get the fuss about the progenitor’s tech. It just sounds like Genesis tech which is centuries old and most alien races will know about it now.

You know what?
That works actually be an awesome twist.

The whole season, hunting for clues, speculating about the raw power of that ancient tech, placing to build/destroy planets & resurrect the dead.... Only then to find it... And: "Oh. It's just an older, alien version of the Genesis device".

(Sadly won't happen as the scientists hiding the clues would have known)

 

[Rahul]

BTW while typing I just realized why the announced "Indiana Jones feeling" won't come up for me:
Indiana Jones raids ancient temples, finds historic artifacts, that then lead him to other, more hidden ancient places.

The Discovery crew OTOH searches for clues that have been hidden by a bunch of (their) contemporary scientists.

It's less "ancient treasure hunt", and more "kids playing hide & seek".

 

[Crewman Commander]

I gotta say, the quality of this episode was substantially above the entire series average. An episode like this is a step in the right direction.

"Scion" would have made a better title, but whatevs.

 

[ananta]

Really don’t understand the people saying they were “bored” and “almost fell asleep” watching this episode. I can understand those who’d dislike the glacial pace of the previous episode. But I thought this was engaging, tense, fast paced and gripping. I’m at a point where I feel strangely out of sync with a large part of the fandom. I guess I have been for a while.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Anyone else guess it was the Badlands from Book’s vision?
I still don’t get the fuss about the progenitor’s tech. It just sounds like Genesis tech which is centuries old and most alien races will know about it now.

Certainly everyone knows about it since (checks date) 2381 and Locarno's use of it in Lower Decks.

Really hoping it ends up being another message from Salome Jens, although I suspect at 88 she's long past working.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Just doing a re-watch and can I just say how stunning the costuming is for T'Rina. Also Tara Rosling has so much gravitas and grace she's such a joy to watch.

 

[Quantum21]

Anyone else guess it was the Badlands from Book’s vision?
I still don’t get the fuss about the progenitor’s tech. It just sounds like Genesis tech which is centuries old and most alien races will know about it now.

Originally they just seeded oceans but we're being told it can do other things, it could even be a series of tech.

Genesis was a tech that didn't work. It couldn't do any of these things successfully except destroy a planet. It's useless as a repeatable, reliable device...and that was with the benefit of 4 billion years of evolution. A remarkable thing indeed this Progenitor tech.

 

[Elaise]

All of that is just kicking the can further down the road. Burnham knew what the Breen Dreadnaught was potentially capable of from her glimpse into the Future. It's also mentioned multiple times that the last time the Breen violated Federation territory, they immediately attacked a planet. Having L'ak onboard a Federation Starship where the Breen could at least talk to him, but also couldn't attack without risk of killing him was the lesser of two evils. It kept the Breen focused on Federation HQ and necessitated the risk that the Breen would have just started carpet bombing planets to draw the Federation out of hiding. Also, if the Federation has been dragged into a shooting war they had the chance for further reinforcements to arrive and consolidate the fleet. That's far better alternative than taking a chance of the Breen finding Federation HQ or Discovery out in the middle of nowhere, where the rest of the Federation Fleet can't provide aid in time.

Neither solution is perfect but I think it was better for the Federation to stand it's ground with Breen than to just delay a confrontation which may have ended up far worse.

All that says it the federation is incompetent as hell if they haven't managed to build up their military to protect themselves. One Breen faction is enough to threaten the entire federation.

 

[Quantum21]

Just doing a re-watch and can I just say how stunning the costuming is for T'Rina. Also Tara Rosling has so much gravitas and grace she's such a joy to watch.

This was her best written and performed episode yet. She was terrific.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Just doing a re-watch and can I just say how stunning the costuming is for T'Rina. Also Tara Rosling has so much gravitas and grace she's such a joy to watch.

Basic Clothing is fabricated, decompiled, and refrabricated day to day.

It's likely that she is given the opportunity to select from hundreds of garments appropriate to her position and occupation, and species, but...

Unless the selector is on shuffle, a Vulcan is just going to take the first suit that fits?

A human practical joker would easily trick this Vulcan, or any Vulcan, even a male Vulcan, into attending high pressure business meetings in just a skimpy bikini.

Which is why there is no April first on the Vulcan calendar.

 

[The Scottish Nightmare]

Originally they just seeded oceans but we're being told it can do other things, it could even be a series of tech.

Genesis was a tech that didn't work. It couldn't do any of these things successfully except destroy a planet. It's useless as a repeatable, reliable device...and that was with the benefit of 4 billion years of evolution. A remarkable thing indeed this Progenitor tech.

Didn’t work? It brought Spock back to life. I would say it worked.
We’ve also seen the Genesis device since Search for Spock in Lower Decks and Picard. I imagine they’ve worked out the kinks since then.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Didn’t work? It brought Spock back to life. I would say it worked.
We’ve also seen the Genesis device since Search for Spock in Lower Decks and Picard. I imagine they’ve worked out the kinks since then.

Did not.

All meat, no brain.

They could have just as easily cloned Spock, and then dumped his Katra in that meat bucket from McCoy's unused recesses.

Of course the problem there is that most cloning tech doesn't need an air gapped Katra. It can come already with a preinstalled katra, so there's no need to blow up a trillion trillion ton Nebula which can only be described as enviromental terrorism, since Nebula's probably serve a purpose as either some thing to mine, or some where which might gel into an M-Class planet within the next 20 trillion years.

But it's a ressurection machine that only works on Vulcans and other telepaths, who again, can take any meat they want to take, even if it's already occupied.

Was Redjac Vulcan?

 

[Agony_Boothb]

All that says it the federation is incompetent as hell if they haven't managed to build up their military to protect themselves. One Breen faction is enough to threaten the entire federation.

Have you actually watched the last two seasons?

 

[eschaton]

BTW while typing I just realized why the announced "Indiana Jones feeling" won't come up for me:
Indiana Jones raids ancient temples, finds historic artifacts, that then lead him to other, more hidden ancient places.

The Discovery crew OTOH searches for clues that have been hidden by a bunch of (their) contemporary scientists.

It's less "ancient treasure hunt", and more "kids playing hide & seek".

Only the first two episodes had an Indiana Jones vibe. The remainder has been very similar to seasons 3 and 4.

The Moll/La'k dynamic in particular is reminding me more and more of Ruon Tarka's (potentially platonic) romance with his "friend." Moll is willing to let the galaxy burn to be reunited with her love, just like he was.

 

[eschaton]

All that says it the federation is incompetent as hell if they haven't managed to build up their military to protect themselves. One Breen faction is enough to threaten the entire federation.

I don't see how this is any different from what we saw in TNG often, where it seemed like there were never more than a handful of ships available save for perhaps the battle of Wolf 359.

Trek has always, always massively screwed up the sense of scale of interstellar powers, the number of ships they should have available, the size of offworld colonies, etc.

 

[The Gatekeeper]

So did Star Trek, with the relaunch books in the late 90s, early 2000s. And the powers that be tossed it all in the dustbin because of the new shows.

"Early 2000s?" The First Splinter timeline in the novels was active until 2021 when it was deemed an alternate timeline and destroyed accordingly.

 

[Elaise]

I don't see how this is any different from what we saw in TNG often, where it seemed like there were never more than a handful of ships available save for perhaps the battle of Wolf 359.

Trek has always, always massively screwed up the sense of scale of interstellar powers, the number of ships they should have available, the size of offworld colonies, etc.

The is a first that I have heard this said about previous treks. You have plenty of episodes showing multiple ships plus star fleet HQ, plus quite a few admirals. You also have the benefit of TOS and movies showing scale of the federation to go by. This issue only started when disco went the future where it essentially reset star fleet.

Have you actually watched the last two seasons?

Um, yes. Not sure what point you are trying to make here.