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

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by Commander Richard, Oct 15, 2017.

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Rate the episode...

  1. 10 - Absolutely fantastic!

    18.1%
  2. 9

    28.9%
  3. 8

    21.7%
  4. 7

    13.3%
  5. 6

    3.9%
  6. 5

    6.3%
  7. 4

    3.0%
  8. 3

    2.4%
  9. 2

    0.3%
  10. 1 - I sling mudd at it!

    2.1%
  1. Gonzo

    Gonzo Guest

    Misery loves company.

    Even though it never finds any.
     
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  2. Serveaux

    Serveaux Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Desperation. After all these years, people need to believe that CBS hasn't dumped Trek in the parking lot and set it on fire. So they'll make excuses for a lot and for quite a while.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2017
  3. Rahul

    Rahul Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This isn't a 'Discovery' fan forum. This is a 'Star Trek' fan forum. Discovery is Star Trek. In fact, it's new Star Trek. You kinda' have to live with fans of the older Trek coming over to see "what's new". It seems some people here would be way better off to check for a seperate, "Discovery only" Internet Forum.

    Condeming leaving someone behind for torture and death REALLY shouldn't be one of those cases where one has to argue about wether or not to condemn it...

    In a civilised society something like that should be self-evident.
     
  4. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    So was it evil for Kirk to abandon Mudd on a planet full of robot Stellas?
     
  5. Serveaux

    Serveaux Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Oh, I don't doubt that at some point someone on the show will reclaim 'War and torture are bad, 'mkay?" and fans will be expected to clap our flippers and proclaim that the producers have fulfilled their promise to show us "how we got to Utopia."

    Lowest common denominator stuff.
     
  6. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    So what exactly happened that stunted the Federation's growth towards utopia (that we see in Enterprise) that caused it to have so many broken officers without morals?

    I smell an inbetweenquel!
     
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  7. ichab

    ichab Commodore Commodore

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    Keep your criticisms on the show and not fellow posters and we'll be fine. :shrug:
     
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  8. Rahul

    Rahul Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't know. Do the robot Stellas imprison him in a small room and regularly come in to beat him to pulp, only to execute him in the long run? If so, that answers your question.
     
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  9. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    Perhaps show writers have woken to the fact that many viewers now recognize that the monocultural atmosphere of TNG and its' ilk do not in fact produce a utopia.

    I haven't seen "broken officers without morals", I've seen realistic wartime personalities. Political correctness doesn't win wars.
     
  10. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    Mudd was never beaten by the Klingons. For all we know, they were paying him to help spy on Federation prisoners.

    And in TOS, Mudd explicitly said that Kirk abandoning him was torture. So was Kirk evil?
     
  11. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I'm sure prisoners who are confined for their crimes also consider it torture. They would be considered unreliable in that instance. On the other hand, we know Klingons torture and kill people without a second thought. So, even if Mudd was working with them, his usefulness to them had ran out. Meaning he would be tortured and eventually killed by his captors.

    So, either way, Lorca comes across very poorly.
     
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  12. Rahul

    Rahul Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This is a hypothetical. Cooperating with your captors to evade torture and death does not mean he will betray his saviours during the act of saving him.

    This isn't his "own" military. He might be human, yes. But he isn't Starfleet. He is a friggin' civilian. Who broke under the threat of torture. Shocker. What a horrible human being.

    I critizice the show for just pulling this (very important!) point under the rug. They turned their "complex" character into full anti-hero mode, and they didn't seem to have realized it. It might be to give hints for his face-heel turn later in the series. But the show failed to address the complexity of the situation.

    But if some fans - arguibly not you, but others, argue IN FAVOUR of such heinous acts, I call them the horrible people they are.

    Case in point:

    Yeah. He cooperated with the klingons to evade from said torture and death. Once the other prisoners are gone, he's useless to the klingons. It's not like he wanted to be in the cell. This dude wasn't an undercover klingon agent. He was just a POW (a civilian nonetheless!) that broke a little earlier than the trained Starfleet officers.

    That's the reason why, in real life, people which were hostages of a terror organization have a long vetting process ahead of them once they are freed. Because they might have cooperated, the same way Mudd did. Doesn't make them evil.

    If you want to get deeper in this sort of material, may I recommend you the television series "Homeland". That delves quite a bit into equal situations. And it's way more mature about these kind of situations than DIS.

    DIS just failed to realize the implications of the situation they wrote themselves in. They just wante to have a fan prison escape action scene, but apparently didn't grasp the complexity of the material they were dealing with, and failed at doing it justice. That's a slip-up. That can happen (See: "Code of Honour" in TNG, where slip-ups of equal amplitude happened), but it deserves criticism, and has to be avoided in the future.
     
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  13. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Star Trek is fantasy. If I want realistic wartime personalities, they are more than amply available pretty much everywhere.
     
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  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Blackadder Goes Forth?

     
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  15. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    Tolkien had written that fantasy requires enough truth to make it engaging for the reader. Modern audiences do not find politically correct utopianism to have enough philosophical truth within it to be entertaining.
     
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  16. Agony_Boothb

    Agony_Boothb Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Seriously? There's 64 pages of people debating ethics and morality in this thread alone, not to mention the other debates going on elsewhere. That doesn't sound like lowest common denominator stuff to me.
     
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  17. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    We're debating whether or not leaving a civilian behind to be tortured and possibly killed is acceptable. There should be no fucking debate at all about this kind of treatment.

    Yet here we are. Thanks Discovery!
     
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  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Admirals decide which side of the war to send their boyscouts and which side of the war to send their bastards. They couldn't win the war or the peace, unless they have both, and know where to send them.

    The new Star Trek continues came out hours ago. :)
     
  19. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    What evidence do you have that Mudd would be tortured or killed? He was helping the Klingons, he was on their side.
     
  20. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Once the Starfleet people are gone, the Klingons should have no further use for him. So, they would likely dispose of him in proper Klingon fashion.