Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x05 - "Choose Your Pain"

There are quire a few computer screens in this episode I want to go back and screen cap.

 

It's probably just a way to show time passing.

 

No way, not with that music.

 

Maybe Stamets has a twin next door and it's not a mirror, but a window.

 

Mine was smooth as silk and crystal clear.

Shrooms will do that.

Yeah, Stamets was unexpected. But I like it when my expectations are upended

Yes, you said that already.

 

It was a joke. You would have to remember my post from an earlier episode.

 

I was really nervous about Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, but he completely owned the role. If his voice was a bit deeper, it would've been perfect. The exact amount of flamboyance the character needed, where the snippets in the trailers made him just seem sinister.

I'm guessing they're going with the idea that D-7 doesn't denote the obvious. There have been things in that direction before, with the D-4 and D-12 Birds of Prey, but I guess this settles that D-# doesn't necessarily refer to the apparent design of the ship. Maybe something to do with what generation of technology it is, or power levels, or mission profile.

 

With that shit eating grin and ominous music I don't think so.

 

Gotta admit I laughed when we saw the tardigrade itself go to warp.

 

What? No Capt. Garth of Izar?

LFIM will be ever so pissed...

 

Wow, IMHO this is some of the best Trek that I've seen in a long time.

Hopefully, this episode will put to rest the "ship full of assholes" complaint. Numerous characters really shone this time. Starmets turned out to be heroic after initially disappointing me. Burnham was as heroic as I expected her to be. Tilly was sweet.

Even with Lorca, while I wouldn't place him in the 'hero' category yet, we do now have a much better understanding of him. The fact that he lets himself suffer severe pain to constantly remind him of his former crew says a lot.

It was fun seeing Mudd again. He is still a scoundrel, and now he has even more backstory to show a hatred for the Federation. And LOL, he was proclaiming love for Stella, although with him we really don't know if he is telling the truth on pretty much anything that he says.

And yeah, I am thinking that Tyler was a Klingon set up.

Another set up that I strongly suspect. In his meeting with the Admirals, it seemed pretty clear to me that they don't like him. How did the Klingons find him? I am thinking that someone high up in Starfleet might have set him up to be captured. It's even possible that a Klingon spy is already infiltrated into Starfleet command.

There were a number of moments that got me teary eyed -- Setting the Tartigrade free, Burnham giving Saru the telescope, Starmets taking the fall for the Tartigrade... as I said at the start, let's put to rest the argument that the Discovery crew are all assholes and that this isn't "real Star Trek". A lot of them were awesome in this episode, and embodied Star Trek fantastically IMHO.

 

They probably left him out intentionally for just that reason.

 

When your main character is the dullest person in your cast...

 

My guess with ending is that being hooked up to the device totally distored and scrambled Stamets's concept of space and time - seeing has how he was literally saw the whole universe of a moment.

Because, as far as I know, he and Culber aren't in a relationship yet. I was actually kind of confused by that. Anyway, I think the conversation was just a variation of similar - and more mundane -conversation the two will have in the future before bedtime one night that his brain "saw" while he was in the machine. And the reflection was just how it was processing the information overload.

If that makes any sense at all...

 

I like the new layer added to Lorca, and the loss of the Buran. Knowing that he’s responsible for the death of his previous crew and the injuries that resulted makes the audience understand what it is that he sees in Burnham: himself. He sees someone who’s responsible for a lot of death and feeling the need to atone for it.

 

I wonder how those toothbrushes work. A variant on the sonic shower maybe?

 

That is an interesting theory.

 

I want to see more of the female bridge officer from the Shenzhou, the one that got the bionic eye. At least give her a speaking role.

 

Well, that was a good one, minus some minor plot issues.

This episode did a lot to allay one of my deepest fears about the series - that only Burnham was being given character development. Stamets, Lorca, Saru, Ash, and even the doctor got a fair amount, although Tilly was still function more as Burnham's sounding board than a character of her own. The episode was full of quiet character moments, not just dumb action scenes. This was the first episode that truly felt like it was from an ensemble cast show rather than a "protagonist driven" one. Rainn Wilson was also great as Harry Mudd, although the female admiral was flaccid. Ash Tyler=Voq also became a bit stronger as a concept, as the actor's mannerisms were the same, there was a plausible time jump for the "procedure" (3 weeks) and plenty of dialogue which could be interpreted in two different ways.

My big issues with this episode have to do with the plot, which was semi-nonsensical in places. I could deal with the McGuffin of Lorca being kidnapped, and his escape with Ash being perfectly timed to Discovery's jump - Trek history is littered with junk like that. However, it stretches credulity that an admiral would tell Lorca not to use the jump until the health of the tartigrade could be guaranteed, but then have the exact same admiral contact the Discovery and say nothing about it to Saru at all. This in turn sets up the central crisis for the Discovery section of the episode, which is amazingly solved not through hard choices, but technobable worthy of Voyager.

I kind of felt like the episode wrapped up a few too many things all pretty in a bow by its end. The episode solved Lorca's kidnapping, ended the "tartigrade arc" (for now at least) and resulted in a reconciliation between Burnham and Saru. If it wasn't for the weirdness with the mirror at the end, it would almost seem like an old Trek episode.