Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x12 - "Vaulting Ambition"

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by Commander Richard, Jan 21, 2018.

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Rate the episode...

  1. 10 - Great!

    23.9%
  2. 9

    30.2%
  3. 8

    18.7%
  4. 7

    12.3%
  5. 6

    3.7%
  6. 5

    2.6%
  7. 4

    1.9%
  8. 3

    4.5%
  9. 2

    0.4%
  10. 1 - Not great.

    1.9%
  1. eschaton

    eschaton Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    If humans in the Terran Empire are evil because they are socialized that way, and not because the universe just gives off "evil radiation" or something, then it stands to reason that once the Empire is destroyed, humans would start drifting back into the normal range of human personalities.
     
  2. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    Actually no he wasn't as he was perfectly fine with kidnapping Sisko and forcing him to impersonate MU Sisko.
     
  3. Hythlodeus

    Hythlodeus Commodore Commodore

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    for the greater good
     
  4. Dataswig

    Dataswig Cadet Newbie

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    Hey! First time poster here. Love the forum thanks to all.
    Question
    Did the mirror discovery swap to the our universe when our discovery jumped to the mirror?
     
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  5. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    That's the assumption and if AfterTrek hinted that we may get to see what the ISS Discovery has been up to...
     
  6. Dataswig

    Dataswig Cadet Newbie

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    Cool. Thanks for your swift reply. Great name btw.

    So did the mirror defiant also come to our universe?
     
  7. Galaxy

    Galaxy Captain Captain

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    In retrospect it is odd that Lorca had to be reminded that he might not be the Captain of the Discovery when they first crossed over. He almost blew his cover right there
     
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  8. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    That's actually one of the big reasons I didn't think he was MU.
     
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  9. Succubint

    Succubint Captain Captain

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    Dataswig, the USS Defiant crossed over into the Mirror Universe 100 years into the past. So tech wasn't that advanced yet. Which made the ship a valuable tactical prize to plunder.
     
  10. Dataswig

    Dataswig Cadet Newbie

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    Jan 23, 2018
    Many thanks... Much appreciated
     
  11. SJGardner

    SJGardner Commodore Commodore

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    In retrospect, he could've played the cautious captain instead and ask Burnham outright to check who the captain is, just to be sure, but he was apparently ready to have his cover blown by the Cooper's captain. If I started to theorize, Occam's razor would tell me that the most probable course would be that Lorca planned to destroy the Cooper after having his cover blown and have Burnham check the crew manifest thereafter, portraying the incident as an honest mistake on his part. Luckily, Burnham was quicker, avoiding the bloodshed.
     
  12. Paradise City

    Paradise City Commodore Commodore

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    The poor Kelpien dude windin' up on the dinner plate. Bleugh!!! That's a species with alot self liberatin' to do.

    I enjoyed the episode. I don't mind Lorca being a MU guy. It's an aggressive twist.There's no intrinsic reason why he can't be as as complex and as challenging if he had of been imagined as a original prime character. He's tasted the prime universe, its values, lived and fought in prime. Formed bonds in prime. There's an open opportunity to take Mirror Lorca in unusual and new startling directions and I hope that happens.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2018
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  13. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Confederation of Earth
    Probably not. The reason the two Discoverys swapped is because of the spore drive. The Defiant crossed over via interphasic space, so it probably wasn't exchanged with its Imperial counterpart (if it even has one).

    I said Terran Empire, not just Terran. ;)

    On a completely unrelated matter:

    I just saw the episode. I thought it was pretty funny that during the dream sequence, when both Stametses enter not-Engineering, there is a plaque on the wall that says:

    USS STAMETS :lol:
     
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  14. Cyke101

    Cyke101 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Feb 11, 2007
    As a side note, can I point out how great it is to hear any new enemy created in the 21st century say the term "United Federation of Planets" with anger and contempt? The UFP was created in the 60s and often gets parodied (Futurama, Tiny Toons, the Orville, even Doctor Who), but to hear it repeated by modern-day threats as a straight up force to be reckoned with helps show how TOS concepts stand the test of time. The Federation's an institution.
     
  15. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    There good...
     
  16. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    Except I don’t believe he has any intention of letting the Discovery (or at least Burnham) return to the PU
     
  17. CorporalClegg

    CorporalClegg Admiral Admiral

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    Based on what evidence?
     
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  18. lawman

    lawman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Jul 20, 2007
    ...vs...
    I find the second interpretation here far more plausible. That is to say, Lorca was a mentor/father figure for MUBurnham at some point after her childhood; he "groomed" her to support him and his causes rather than Emperor Georgiou and hers; they may or may not have had a sexual relationship but if so it was as adults; and what the Emperor really resents is that he "stole" Burnham's loyalties away from her.

    Obviously in the current political moment the word "groomed" does (sometimes) have the connotations CK describes, and possibly the Emperor was deliberately trying to insinuate that meaning in order to drive a wedge between PUBurnham and Lorca... but there is no reason to assume that it means Lorca was literally a sexual predator toward MUBurnham. Indeed, I'd question whether the concept of "sexual predator" even has any meaning in the MU, given what we've seen of its relationship practices to date... it simply describes the norm for how everyone behaves.

    Regardless, even if we do read the worst into the situation per the "vibe" CK got from the scene... I will still stand by my statement that in the big picture, even someone as "creepy" as that would still be a far better person to have at the reins of the government than the kind of absolute psychopath we've seen the Emperor to be. In moral terms there's simply no comparison.

    ...vs...
    Ah, a good old-fashioned debate over mind-body duality! This ep really does bring up lots of conversational fodder.

    FWIW, the show so far has gone out of its way to obfuscate just how much (and what parts) of "Tyler" are from the original Tyler, and what parts are from Voq, both physically and mentally. What we have seems to be some sort of surgical composite using body parts from both, with Voq's original brain, but with Tyler's consciousness inserted into it (perhaps by way of the Klingon mind-sifter we heard about way back in "Errand of Mercy"). Then again, I could be wrong. At any rate, he's some sort of hybrid.

    How this was even possible, much less in a way that would fool Starfleet medical scans, much less in a way that actually seemed like a viable plan to L'rell and Voq? Heaven only knows. (And the show made things even more confusing with the timeline, telling us that L'rell and Voq spent the first six months of the war just sitting in space... meaning that the planning, surgery, mind-switch, and subsequent healing must all have taken place in a very short timeframe!...)

    Bottom line, though, and regardless of what we may think of these issues IRL, in the Trek universe it's fairly clear that a consciousness can be transferred from one physical body to another... either natural or artificial... and still remain intact. Therefore, it seems to me to make a lot more sense to attach the concept of "identity" to the intangible consciousness than to the physical substrate. IOW, if Voq's consciousness is really gone, and what's left thinks of himself as Tyler... it's Tyler.

    Good analysis! You have, I suspect, put more detailed thought into it than the writers necessarily did.

    I think that video misinterpreted a scene and is spreading unnecessary confusion. The tentacled dish that MUSaru served Burnham in her quarters, and that we'd seen Lorca eat on an earlier occasion, was not Kelpian. It looked disgusting, but we don't know what it was. The dish that MUGeorgiou (gaak, I hate spelling that name) served Burnham on the Charon was Kelpian, but it looked different, and we've never seen Lorca eating it.

    Heh! Just to clarify, folks... I fully understand that I was posting personal opinion! ;-) I used the words "empirically, intellectually" to describe my awareness that other people have come to Trek fandom through different routes, not to describe my personal impression that appreciating TOS is a sine qua non for appreciating Trek as a whole. XCV, props to your kids however they came to it, and I'm sure having a parent who was a fan was a double-edged sword for them! LongSyntax, I know there's no litmus test. Heck, a former girlfriend of mine was a huge fan of VOY, a show I literally gave up as unwatchable. She came to it as a kid, it was her introduction to Trek, and she sincerely loved it. I can acknowledge the personal validity of that even while I can't remotely relate to it. Perhaps there's something special about the first show you watch, or the one that gets its hooks into you in your formative years... that's how I discovered TOS, myself.

    Still, I confess I remain baffled by the people who enjoy later shows yet genuinely dislike TOS... like the poster who prompted this discussion, for instance. If nothing else, it's the template on which everything that followed was based, after all. The whole concept of what a starship and its crew and Starfleet and the Federation are and do and look like... that's where it all came from. If you like that stuff, how can you dislike TOS?

    I'm inclined toward Door Number One there. From everything we've seen of Lorca, if he tried to lead a coup against the Emperor, I'm assuming it was out of a genuine desire to improve things, not just to seize power for himself. He seems like someone with a sincere concern for the people around him and a solid, ethical concept of the ends he's pursuing... just a fairly flexible sense of the means he can use to reach them.

    To expand on that as bit, as I've mentioned in other posts, I much prefer the notion that the MU is a place where most people are just "good Germans," going along to get along in a society ruled by fear. They may be "a little bit more evil" than PU residents on average, but it's a matter of adaptation to circumstances, not of destiny or genetics, and most of them aren't out-and-out psychopaths.

    Thanks. Interesting. The fact that he even had to clarify suggests that the scene was presented in a needlessly confusing way.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2018
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  19. SJGardner

    SJGardner Commodore Commodore

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    To be fair, their only other choice was to commit mass suicide to avoid being recaptured by the Alliance. They couldn't even gone into hiding, as Jennifer would've completed the new sensors that would uncover all their remaining hideouts in the Badlands. Committing an act of desperation as a last ditch effort to protect his compatriots doesn't make him irredeemable for me. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Smiley completely understood that.
     
  20. Captain Killy

    Captain Killy Commander Red Shirt

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    Was that to me in regards to Lorca?

    In the trailer for next week’s episode there’s a shot of him looking at Burnham and saying “Welcome Home”.

    Which says to me, he plans on keeping her...