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

[Deks]

I did enjoy Rayner flinging the breen to the barrier.

But...he said it'll take them decades to get back suggesting they still have standard warp.

But...book mentions a run in with talaxian pirates and we've seen at least one other delta quadrant species in the alpha quadrant this season which to me suggests that faster warp is ubiquitous.

So surely the breen can get back sooner than Rayner suggested? They can't be that far behind even the talaxians in terms of warp can they?

Yeah... pretty much everyone still uses standard Warp (the Breen included).

But regardless, some things don't make a lot of sense to me.
It looks as if they can make runs throughout the Galaxy at normal Warp easily if its in the inner spiral section of the Milky Way, but if a vessel is far enough away, it will end up taking them decades to get to a certain location (it was said that Disco would take about 70 odd years to return home from Species 10-C location - which isn't too far away from the Galactic Barrier (the original 10-C planet was about 2.5 Ly's away from the barrier, and their new home was not too far away either - so I think Disco remained within 10 LY distance of the Galactic Barrier after breaching it - its the tens of thousands of Ly's on the inside of the galaxy, from the barrier back to Fed HQ or the location of the binary black hole system that matters).

This suggests that Warp speeds didn't fundamentally advance beyond the 24th century it seems. Or they did, but in very small increments that it was negligible.

Either way, Warp speed remains inconsistent on Disco as it did on other shows - though its possible they used TW corridors here and there to get around more easily to certain locations... its just that where Rayner flung the Breen Dreadnought there weren't any TW conduits of subspace corridors to lessen the trip.

 

[Deks]

The Progenitor lying to Michael seems more likely given they were very clear the Breen had used the technology as a purposful weapon.

Ok, but why would the Progenitor lie to M.B.?
Its possible the Breen figured out the whole 'negative space' thing on their own (they aren't stupid) and managed to find all the clues themselves and then use the technology as a weapon.

To be fair, the time bug episode did NOT explicitly clarify if the Breen used the Progenitor tech as a weapon per say (it was just assumed they did)... the Breen had more than enough firepower in that dreadnought of theirs to flatten the Fed HQ and all ships stationed there all on its own it seems (As it was clearly said that none of the UFP ships were a match for those dreadnoughts - which makes me think as to why would the Breen even need the Progenitor tech to start with? That single dreadnought could easily go on a rampage through Fed space and conquer like most things there... it would take a large fleet of ships to stop it, and UFP didn't seem to have enough to deal with just 1 of those things in any given area).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

But regardless, some things don't make a lot of sense to me.
It looks as if they can make runs throughout the Galaxy at normal Warp easily if its in the inner spiral section of the Milky Way, but if a vessel is far enough away, it will end up taking them decades to get to a certain location (it was said that Disco would take about 70 odd years to return home from Species 10-C location - which isn't too far away from the Galactic Barrier (the original 10-C planet was about 2.5 Ly's away from the barrier, and their new home was not too far away either - so I think Disco remained within 10 LY distance of the Galactic Barrier after breaching it - its the tens of thousands of Ly's on the inside of the galaxy, from the barrier back to Fed HQ or the location of the binary black hole system that matters).

This suggests that Warp speeds didn't fundamentally advance beyond the 24th century it seems. Or they did, but in very small increments that it was negligible.

Either way, Warp speed remains inconsistent on Disco as it did on other shows - though its possible they used TW corridors here and there to get around more easily to certain locations... its just that where Rayner flung the Breen Dreadnought there weren't any TW conduits of subspace corridors to lessen the trip.

Let's assume they aren't using TW Corridors for whatever reason.

Spoiler: How Fast USS Discovery-A is using Warp Drive

____________________________________________________________________________________________________
- How Fast can the USS Discovery-A travel using classical Warp Drive -
I did some math for how fast Discovery was traveling at Warp Speeds after they hopped out of the Mycelial Network near the Galactic Barrier.

It appears that it took Discovery ~6.5 minutes to cover ~9 light years.

According to my Warp Factor Scale 3.0:
That becomes somewhere between Wf 57-58 on my scale which is pretty damn good.

For reference, Wf 9.9 on the TNG scale, according to Tom Paris, comes out to Wf 20 on my scale.

The USS Equinox's enhanced Warp Drive using Nucleogenic Energy from the dead interdimensional Aliens was Wf 43 on my scale.

SubSpace Vortex Drives seen in ST:ENT that were used by the Xindi are Wf 73 on my scale.

The Millenium Falcon's HyperDrive is Wf of 122.X on my scale.

Quantum SlipStream (Version 1) is at Wf 145 on my scale
Quantum SlipStream (Version 2) {w/ Consumable Benamite Crystals} is at Wf 825 on my scale.

It's actually not bad IMO, not amazing, but it's fine as a improvement to basic Warp Drive.

If Discovery could cruise at Wf 57-58 indefinitely as long as it had fuel & enough Dilithium Crystals, then on my Wf Version 3.0 scale
(My Wf 3.0 scale is TNG scale with the hand drawn curve to infinity after Wf 9 removed, I let the original formula run to infinity), Discovery can easily cover 712,700.835189967 ly in < 1.0 Gregorian years.

Discovery would've been home in < 1 year, regardless of where the hole in the Galactic Barrier was located at on the Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.

I've already stated the size of the Milky Way over here. Even in a worse case scenario, it would've been closer to just under a full year to get back.

Luckily 10C gave them a short cut so they didn't have to take the long way home.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

The writers for DISCO probably never did the math to count how far it would take for Discovery-A to come back.
It wouldn't have been immediate, but it would be "Relatively Quick", especially compared to USS Voyager.

Spoiler: The size of UFP Territory

If the Breen Dreadnought was flung to the furthest point away from the UFP along the Galactic Barrier that is surrounding the "Galactic Halo". Then that could be "Pretty far out there.

Spoiler: 2D Top-Down Orthographic Galactic Map of the "Thin Disk" section of our Milky Way Galaxy

Remember, that space is 3D and we live amongst the Thin Disk along one side.

Spoiler: 3D Cartessian Coordinate Systems

And the 3D volume that we need to explore is MASSIVE.

Spoiler: [NOTE: Not to Scale!] Structure of our Milky Way Galaxy & presumably most Galaxies

And the size of our Milky Way Galaxy is ALOT larger than what most people think:

Spoiler: The estimated size of the major Astronomical Structuures of our Galaxy

That would come out to be ~327,723.292 light years from Sol System at the furthest possible point right near the Galactic Barrier, a few light years away from it, just like how Discovery was when it tried to travel there.
Given that the Breen Dreadnought ship is damaged, wasn't prepared for a long journey in any way/shape/form.
Is shunted into hostile/unknown space and has limited resources, it'll take them a while to get back.
Even if they had enough fuel for a straight trip back at cruise speeds, that could be in the order of months that they get back home. I'm guess-timating 6-10 months. If they don't have the resources and need to scrounge up extra fuel/dilithium, it could be MUCH longer for them. Especially if they get into any trouble along the way or get lost or entangled into local mischief.

Spoiler: This isn't even factoring all our neighboring Galaxies in lour Local Group

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

I don’t see any reason for her to lie about it. The writers maybe weren’t at the stage where the details had been fleshed out, but they knew the gist of what they were going for.

I've seen plenty of "that was the plan all along" from writers in interviews.

 

[Fateor]

This suggests that Warp speeds didn't fundamentally advance beyond the 24th century it seems. Or they did, but in very small increments that it was negligible.

Except we know due to Prodigy's protowarp drive that it did. (And that's not even counting the non-benemite slipstream or non-corridor based transwarp.)

Ok, but why would the Progenitor lie to M.B.?

Because they wanted to deceive or test her is the most obvious.

Hell, it was a mental projection so we don't even know for sure that it was a Progenitor. For all we actually know it could have been a program left behind by the scientists. It's not like Michael Burnham bothered to run it through an analysis after all.

And to emphasize why you should always do that.

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To be fair, the time bug episode did NOT explicitly clarify if the Breen used the Progenitor tech as a weapon per say (it was just assumed they did)... the Breen had more than enough firepower in that dreadnought of theirs to flatten the Fed HQ and all ships stationed there all on its own it seems (As it was clearly said that none of the UFP ships were a match for those dreadnoughts - which makes me think as to why would the Breen even need the Progenitor tech to start with? That single dreadnought could easily go on a rampage through Fed space and conquer like most things there... it would take a large fleet of ships to stop it, and UFP didn't seem to have enough to deal with just 1 of those things in any given area).

One of those things has to be wrong.

So either Michael was wrong about the Breen needing the Progenitor technology to destroy Starfleet, or Michael and the rest of Starfleet was wrong about the Breen Dreadnoughts chances.

 

[CrockAlley]

How many people watched the opening titles? Because they changed them up for this episode, they included bits from all 5 seasons of openings.

Thanks for mentioning it. I hadn't noticed and went back and watched it again. That was fun!

For someone who was raised in the Vulcan way, Burnham sure gets overly emotional about everything.

I don't think this show has ever implied that Michael was trying to strictly adhere to the emotionless Vulcan ideal. She's grown as a person over the course of the show. If anything, her Vulcan upbringing may explain why she appears very emotional, as a reaction/decompression to being brought up suppressing them.

Daniel’s identity has more impact on the Memory Alpha than the plot.

I agree. I don't understand all the angst surrounding this topic. It was a fun easter egg, nothing more.

I'm not sure Burnham has the right to make that call, but she's right that she won't be second-guessed on it.

I believe Michael says she's going to bring the idea to the President and Vance for approval.

 

[daedalus5]

Well, I’ve nit been a fan since they jumped to this new time period. It was good to see actors in their older age, at the end, but they should have shown Calypso post credits to remind us of the plot. Daniel’s was a poor reveal. Oh well, at least it’s finished. I loved the first 2 seasons.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

BURNHAM: I've read your file. If I may... You know, Silik sure did elude you a lot, didn't he? I thought you knew everything about everyone. Catching him should have been a breeze. But instead, you put up Captain Archer to do it. Why?




KOVICH: Silik was a particularly slippery shapeshifter. I hate shapeshifters. The way Biff Tannen hates manure.



BURNHAM: And what's the deal with all these things on your shelf? They're all historical artefacts. Even a VISOR. Who did that belong to?



KOVICH: I got it off the back of a comic book. It promised X-ray Vision. It didn't deliver on its promise.



BURNHAM: A baseball?



KOVICH: From the winning game of the 2015 World Series when the Cubs won. Exciting game. Terrible seating. I much prefer our holographic chairs.

 

[StarTrek1701]

I was thinking of seeing the Dexter sequel series sometimes, are you saying it's not worth it?

TOS got a pretty shitty finale too. Maybe even worse than Enterprise. TaTV at least didn't say "She couldn't be happy being...just a woman". But yeah, Discovery has the 3rd worst finale, but only because TNG, DS9, Voyager and Picard had quite good finales.

F$CK! I didn't wanna spoil it for you or anyone Bro, sorry.
Just watch it for yourself and decide, I was just giving my own opinion.

Spoiler

Between me, my wife and several of our friends, investing 10 hours into the show was absolutely NOT worth it for the ending

 

[Deks]

Except we know due to Prodigy's protowarp drive that it did. (And that's not even counting the non-benemite slipstream or non-corridor based transwarp.)

Oh I'm perfectly aware of those technologies, but as it was established in Season 3 of Discovery, it appears that 'none of the alternatives proved viable'.

So, none of those technologies apparently continued being used for whatever reasons (even there is no viable reason they shouldn't be).

The Breen themselves used standard Warp (as did all other species)... and not even UFP was using anything else.

Because they wanted to deceive or test her is the most obvious.

Hell, it was a mental projection so we don't even know for sure that it was a Progenitor. For all we actually know it could have been a program left behind by the scientists. It's not like Michael Burnham bothered to run it through an analysis after all.

And to emphasize why you should always do that.

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You won't find me arguing against Trek characters checking and double checking for deceit, however, the scene didn't play out in such a capacity, therefore there is no indication Michael was being lied to.

One of those things has to be wrong.

So either Michael was wrong about the Breen needing the Progenitor technology to destroy Starfleet, or Michael and the rest of Starfleet was wrong about the Breen Dreadnoughts chances.

Since we know Discovery didn't have the means (firepower wise) to destroy the Dreadnought (and everyone at HQ was seriously frightened by a sudden appearance of a single dreadnaught despite the HQ being there and also several other ships in the area), and Disco even nearly destroyed a couple episodes before that under a direct assault, and only managed to lightly damage the dreadnought by flying into its open bay area (from which the Breen ship relatively quickly recovered), it seems to be clear to me that the Breen never needed the Progenitor technology to destroy Starfleet - but in fact wanted it for something else (aka, to maybe take control of other Breen factions by leveraging what kind of technological power they wield).

In fact, the damage to the HQ as seen in the time bug episode was indicative of the dreadnought destroying it... not the progenitor technology (which I think wouldn't leave a trace of the HQ).

What I seriously don't understand is... the Breen have a lot of these dreadnoughts, and SF has apparently 'puny' ships in comparison which don't come close in being able to defeating them.
And given the apparent hostility of the Breen towards UFP in general, I'm actually shocked the idiots never thought to just destroy Starfleet HQ much earlier and conquer the Federation.

None of what we saw indicates Starfleet of the 32nd century has ships capable of holding against the Breen for example (who were nothing but a small power in the 24th century)... and that's... moronic.
You can be peaceful and focus on exploration while having ships that can rival neighbouring powers in combat prowess... but all evidence we saw points to the premise SF can apparently no longer defend itself even - and that's even more unrealistic.

So what's stopping the Breen? The writers it seems. In-universe wise... maybe they just don't see UFP as worthy of conquering? But that clashes with S5.

 

[eschaton]

Didn't they wipe out raynors home planet or something

Show vs. tell issue. Showing a character doing evil things is always going to be far, far more effective than telling the audience that the bad guy did evil things off screen.

Also "they" didn't. The female Breen primarch did, who got off Scot free here, with Rayner never getting his revenge. Acting as if this is the logical comeuppance for this within the story is effectively endorsing collective punishment.

But my main issue isn't that the Breen didn't seem bad, it's that they didn't actually seem threatening. Unless you're doing a full-on antihero ala John Wick, you really don't want to watch your protagonist effortlessly slaughtering mooks who never even come close to putting them in danger. It's basically just murder, in that case. The same way that stomping on a yippy chihuahua trying to bite you would be.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ahhh this is interesting; they had a plan. I’m more intrigued than ever as to how this would have panned out. We’ll probably never know. It would be cool though if they got to “do” the planned season six in novel or graphic novel form. I’d snap it up in a heartbeat.

Keep in mind that the first sketches we saw for Book's vessel in the pre-publicity for Season Three were labelled as being for Craft's ship. It is likely that they were planning to revisit Craft at some stage and tie in to "Calypso" earlier.

Well, I’ve nit been a fan since they jumped to this new time period. It was good to see actors in their older age, at the end, but they should have shown Calypso post credits to remind us of the plot. Daniel’s was a poor reveal. Oh well, at least it’s finished. I loved the first 2 seasons.

If you watched on Paramount+, "Short Treks" is available there. I did notice an onscreen reminder to watch "Calypso" at the end of the final "The Ready Room".

Re Daniels: I don't understand all the angst surrounding this topic. It was a fun easter egg, nothing more.

I have already read comments from fans who have either ignored or forgotten "Enterprise" saying that they intend to go back and revisit all of the Daniels episodes. Which for Paramount+ (and Paramount Home Video) is a Good Thing.

 

[Commander Troi]

I enjoyed it. I was glad they didn't resurrect L'ak. Moll seemed completly deflated and defeated after that, and I think that was appropriate. I liked that they didn't bring back Book's planet - I felt that would've cheapened Book's arc from last season. The wedding was lovely and I'm glad Book and Michael got their happy ending. I could've lived without the Calypso tie-in. I think they did fairly well under the circumstances.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

BURNHAM: You're a Temporal Agent? Where did your missions take you?



KOVICH: All over the place. I once recruited a version of James T. Kirk to run over Edith Keeler. He was a terrible driver. Seemed ideal for the mission. I helped Rachel Garrett pass her Starfleet entrance exams. I helped Boothby with his weeding. Because I like gardening, really. I worked on Deep Space Nine as a Dabo girl. Thank goodness for mobile holo-emitters. I served then Captain Janeway her coffee every day from my own replicator rations. It distracted her from noticing I kept replacing Voyager's complement of photon torpedoes and shuttles. It was funny no one on that ship ever caught on...not even Seven of Nine... Disappointing.

 

[Tosk]

Apologies if this already came up, but in the final scene of Burnham and Zora...was Burnham the only one on the ship? It seemed like it, with the empty bridge. But then the ship spore-jumps. Can it do that on its own?

And how did Burnham (plus crew?) get home again in a reasonable amount of time?

 

[El Maestro]

Apologies if this already came up, but in the final scene of Burnham and Sora...was Burnham the only one on the ship? It seemed like it, with the empty bridge. But then the ship spore-jumps. Can it do that on its own?

And how did Burnham (plus crew?) get home again in a reasonable amount of time?

Yeah I think this is a good point and reinforces that the epilogue should’ve focused on something else instead of shoe horning a connection to something from like 3 show runners ago in order to cater to only the most demented sickos who would spend time worrying and arguing online about such a thing (and to be clear I count myself among them).

 

[Fateor]

Oh I'm perfectly aware of those technologies, but as it was established in Season 3 of Discovery, it appears that 'none of the alternatives proved viable'.

So, none of those technologies apparently continued being used for whatever reasons (even there is no viable reason they shouldn't be).

The Breen themselves used standard Warp (as did all other species)... and not even UFP was using anything else.

The things that didn't prove viable in Season 3 of Discovery were not alternate propulsion methods.

They were alternate propulsion methods which didn't rely on Dilithium.

Protowarp however required an Exotic Matter Dilithium Matrix. (And since the Breen apparently had enough Dilithium to run those giant dreadnaughts they obviously had it in spades.)

And yes, I realize this whole thing was the writers very much forgetting that Warp Drive didn't require dilithium to work.

You won't find me arguing against Trek characters checking and double checking for deceit, however, the scene didn't play out in such a capacity, therefore there is no indication Michael was being lied to.

It might not have in the context of that specific episode.

But it absolutely did in the context of the greater setting because what was claimed doesn't match up with other things that have happened and been said.

Since we know Discovery didn't have the means (firepower wise) to destroy the Dreadnought (and everyone at HQ was seriously frightened by a sudden appearance of a single dreadnaught despite the HQ being there and also several other ships in the area), and Disco even nearly destroyed a couple episodes before that under a direct assault, and only managed to lightly damage the dreadnought by flying into its open bay area (from which the Breen ship relatively quickly recovered), it seems to be clear to me that the Breen never needed the Progenitor technology to destroy Starfleet - but in fact wanted it for something else (aka, to maybe take control of other Breen factions by leveraging what kind of technological power they wield).

In fact, the damage to the HQ as seen in the time bug episode was indicative of the dreadnought destroying it... not the progenitor technology (which I think wouldn't leave a trace of the HQ).

What I seriously don't understand is... the Breen have a lot of these dreadnoughts, and SF has apparently 'puny' ships in comparison which don't come close in being able to defeating them.
And given the apparent hostility of the Breen towards UFP in general, I'm actually shocked the idiots never thought to just destroy Starfleet HQ much earlier and conquer the Federation.

None of what we saw indicates Starfleet of the 32nd century has ships capable of holding against the Breen for example (who were nothing but a small power in the 24th century)... and that's... moronic.
You can be peaceful and focus on exploration while having ships that can rival neighbouring powers in combat prowess... but all evidence we saw points to the premise SF can apparently no longer defend itself even - and that's even more unrealistic.

So what's stopping the Breen? The writers it seems. In-universe wise... maybe they just don't see UFP as worthy of conquering? But that clashes with S5.

Is it actually true that Discovery didn't have the means to destroy the Dreadnaught?

They punched through it's shields into it's interior pretty easy, so what was stopping them from just unloading with a full alpha strike into the ships unshielded interior?

 

[Tuskin38]

Huh Tahal was voiced by Patricia Summersett

For the Nintendo fans out there, she was the VA for Zelda in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Summersett

 

[Aragorn]

I was thinking of seeing the Dexter sequel series sometimes, are you saying it's not worth it?

It's better than season 8 (which isn't saying much), which was completely lifeless and didn't think a single thing through (Batista says he's going to reopen LaGuerta's murder in the first episode and never brings it up again? Masuka's random daughter? Dexter kills the big bad and everyone who witnessed it just shrugs it off?), especially with a series finale that's worse than These Are the Voyages. Can't think of another show that had this many highest highs and lowest lows.

There are some genuinely interesting things with Dexter: New Blood, but there's also a lot of stupid and poor payoffs. I say the ending it had could've been a powerful ending if they had gotten there a completely different way.

 

[Skywalker]

Personally I like that they made an effort to connect this to "Calypso," but just telling poor Zora to go sit in space for centuries and wait for something called Craft to come along is wacky. Especially since nothing important really happened when Zora rescued Craft. Unless rescuing Craft was the whole point. But, if that's the case... why?

That being said, I didn't watch "Calypso" when it first aired and then, after DSC jumped forward in time, I decided to just wait until it ended before I'd finally watch the short, and I did think it felt right watching it immediately after "Life, Itself." But with the way DSC decided to set it up, it just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.