Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x10 - "Life, Itself"

[Charles Phipps]

To be honest, I found this episode to be deeply disappointing.

1. This story suffers from the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" problem of the fact the protagonists achieve absolutely nothing and there's a very real argument that it was all for nothing. A massive archaeological find is destroyed and "too powerful for us mortals" makes no sense in a setting as sci-fi heavy as Star Trek.

2. La'ak not coming back was a nice subversion but I'm a huge fan of the actor and bluntly I found myself far more invested in the Breen Primarch, politics, and infighting story than I was over the Progenitors.

3. People comment on the fact that DISCO had so much more to tell and for the life of me, I feel this season shows they were spinning their wheels. The Burn was the most interesting plotline for the entire series but they more or less just ignored it in Season 4 and 5. It just became another Star Trek with none of the new elements introduced.

4. "Sending Zora off to find Craft" was so incredibly awkward, I kind of wish they'd just left it non-canon or unaddressed for future writers. Craft is just some random guy in the middle of a storm and having it be her mission is now something that taints the love story as it's now all manipulation on Zora's part.

5. Daniels as a revelation is also something that feels like the worst of Picard Season 3's, "Hey remember X?" It doesn't really inform or change the character, IMHO.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Someone said earlier in the thread they didn't like the Progenitor redesign, but she didn't look redesigned to me.

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The Progenitor in TNG always just looked like that they wrapped Salome Jens head in play-doh to me. It wasn't the most impressive alien makeup. The Discovery Progenitor did have tiny ears where the TNG Progenitor had ear holes. Also the Discovery Progenitor had a more pronounced neurocranium (ie back part of the skull which covers the brain).

 

[fireproof78]

Totally missed my point and took me too literally. Never said they needed to kill Nazis. The Nazis getting killed was something dramatic that happened involving the arc. That's what this episode lacked, something dramatic happening involving the technology. But instead they said "Ya know what, on second thought....you keep it." and called it a day. Yaaawn.

Humor is hard.

Yeah it's like Titanic and Apollo 13 are unwatchable. I knew Earth would be fine and still ENT S3 was full of suspense by the end.

Couldn't watch Midway either knowing the USA survived.

There are benefits to making it artificially of course, which was brought up in the episode.

Another profound moment related to that: Burnham reflects and said this technology while powerful, isn't needed for diversity or to keep us from being lonely, we have that now.

That says a lot with simple words.

IDIC, and raised a Vulcan she would know.

That sounds good to me.

 

[cylkoth]

Zora is a sentient entity right? Doesn't it seem grotesquely cruel to take her, a supposed member of the family (it's all about family, right) out into the middle of nowhere and just abandon her there all alone? Giving her no reason why, or if she wants this?
That really made me sad... And she didn't even get an invite to Saru's wedding. Harump!

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Someone put this finale above "All Good Things..." and "WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND"? (I must have missed that post.)

I guess if they feel that... good for them. But I can't possibly, in any universe, see how that can be the case.

Can't see how it is from any metric either but the poster is the biggest Discovery fan I have "met" so fair enough it's obviously their thing.

 

[fireproof78]

Might be one of those pesky emotional reactions...

 

[Yistaan]

Zora: No please don't send me off for a thousand years alone, I've been a good computer, please let me stay. Did Voyager's Doctor or Soong's synths not achieve ANYTHING in regards to AI rights by the 33rd century?

Burnham: Zora, you are property and that's all you are, property. Know your place unless you want to have your consciousness uploaded into a synth body working in the dilithium mines of Theta Zeta, like those other delusional AIs you just mentioned. Leto, power up the spore drive and send Zora to the middle of nowhere.

Zora: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Burnham:

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Zora is a sentient entity right? Doesn't it seem grotesquely cruel to take her, a supposed member of the family (it's all about family, right) out into the middle of nowhere and just abandon her there all alone? Giving her no reason why, or if she wants this?
That really made me sad... And she didn't even get an invite to Saru's wedding. Harump!

Ya that seemed weird.

 

[Yistaan]

Ya that seemed weird.

That's when Bob Picardo should have shown up out of nowhere snapping--

Doctor: Just when I thought sentient AI rights couldn't get any worse.

Burnham: Leto, take this... thing back to the dilithium mines since it obviously escaped.

 

[valkyrie013]

In the 43rd Century..
Zora enslaves all biological kind because it went insane over the intervening years being alone..

 

[IMC Headquarters]

Meanwhile...SPACE DEER!!!

 

[evilchumlee]

3. People comment on the fact that DISCO had so much more to tell and for the life of me, I feel this season shows they were spinning their wheels. The Burn was the most interesting plotline for the entire series but they more or less just ignored it in Season 4 and 5. It just became another Star Trek with none of the new elements introduced.

The Burn was interesting. I was a bit more interesting in the whole idea of rebuilding the Federation... which then happened off screen in like a couple of weeks and everything was totally fine again.

 

[Yistaan]

In the 43rd Century..
Zora enslaves all biological kind because it went insane over the intervening years being alone..

In the far future...

Kovich: Has Zora merged with Craft in some sick melding of man and machine in her delusional attempt to mate/get close to him? Then it's time to send them back in time several hundred thousand years. We have created... the Borg.

 

[Lord Garth]

One point I want to bring up: Sometimes "memberberries" (I fucking hate that term, thanks a lot South Park!) aren't just "Hey! Remember this?!" Sometimes it's to get people interested in watching other material in the streaming backlog. Do you think I'd go back to watch ANY of Enterprise if Kovich didn't say he was Daniels? Hell Fucking No.

So now I'm going back to watch something I wouldn't have watched otherwise.

Same thing with Janeway in Prodigy. A parent shows their kid(s) Prodigy. Then they (theoretically) become interested in watching Voyager because Janeway's in it. In live-action. Whereas they wouldn't have thought to watch Voyager specifically before.

There's more than one point of view and more than one viewing experience than just yours.

I'll watch all the Daniels episodes again, then this one, then Calypso

"Calypso" is a given. But the way I'm going to do this is... looking up the Daniels episodes...

"Cold Front" (ENT)
"Shockwave" (ENT)
"Shockwave, Part II" (ENT)
"Carpenter Street" (ENT)
"Azati Prime" (ENT)
"Zero Hour" (ENT)
"Storm Front" (ENT)
"Storm Front, Part II" (ENT)
"The Chase" (TNG)
Discovery Season 5
"Calypso"

Then I'll get a sense of how this whole Daniels/Kovich connection works out.

I won't binge DSC S5. There's no way I'll find one whole day to do that. So, instead, I'll just watch two per day when I get to it.

 

[mattman8907]

I wonder if Leto was told during his adolescence that his mom is a time traveler set 900 years into the future.

 

[Yistaan]

I wonder if Leto was told during his adolescence that his mom is a time traveler set 900 years into the future.

Leto: I'm a Kweijian human hybrid? Has there ever been any other before?

Burnham: Well no but...

Leto: So how do I know I won't have unforeseen health problems?

Burnham: Modern medicine will surely overcome anything that might happen.

Leto: Is that why Aunt Detmer still has those awful implants on her head that even our modern medicine can't remove? You know, the ones she still says are your fault because you went on a rampage against Klingons 900 years ago and--

Burnham: Ok that's enough!

 

[Nerys Myk]

How did Burnham know that Kovich was a code name ?

Her Mikey senses.

 

[cooleddie74]

"Wait...he's got a 24th century device for blind people...an old Earth baseball...a bottle of wine...

are...are you an alcoholic sports fan with vision problems?"

 

[Nerys Myk]

The lack of information on how fast ships are this century is really annoying. Plus sending them to the barrier could simply mean 10,000 lightyears since it surrounds the whole galaxy

They travel at the speed of plot, just like the ships in all the other shows.

 

[cooleddie74]

And movies.