Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x10 - "Terra Firma, Part 2"

At the risk of sounding very naïve why not? Star Trek is about humanity's ability to change so why not show such a change? Yeah, it's simplistic but that's the point of storytelling, from my view.

To misquote Obama "That's the change they need!"

 

Admittedly, I'm bummed about the lack of Lorca. When the heck is Jason Isaacs gonna come back? With Georgiou yeeted back in time to what I'm guessing is an era prior to the 23rd century, Prime Lorca's (apparent*) options rest with Strange New Worlds now. And Mirror Lorca, well... Vicar proved too elusive in the end!

*Apparent requires an asterisk because this is Star Trek. Anything can happen.

 

This was a trash episode. A lot of filler for what is essentially a backdoor pilot about a character and institution I care zero about. I have no idea how a kinder, gentler Phillipa is going to "save many" in what is a patently evil (and Federation/Star Trek incompatible) organization.

It was as boring as the previous episode. Maybe more so because we had to sit through an episode capping wake for a character, again, I don't care about. Like the Mirror stuff in season one, I feel like they side tracked there because they weren't interested in the main story they were telling - there the Klingon War, here the future Feds and the Burn. There is a lack of confidence in the meat of this mystery and why we should care about a Star Fleet that's completely feckless and a future universe that lacks any compelling technology or design to differentiate it from the 23rd C.

What I did really like was Mirror Culper's Flash Gordon medic outfit. That, or something like it should have been the 31st C Starfleet uniform.

The only thing worse than this past two hours of Discovery is Robert Meyer Burnett.

 

Hahahahaha! Very true.

 

Fire at will!

 

What message? No one on the Orange side thinks they're doing anything wrong and needs to be reformed or apologize for anything.

 

Starting with baseline of 5:
+1 for Burnham torture (more pleeease), +1 for Burnham getting gutted (but see below) +1 for negative/mirror/upside down new intro, +1 for Airiam and Nilsson appearing together, +1 for Georgiou performance, +1 for nice few visuals of Old Discovery (I actually like it more than the -A), +1 for being cautiously optimistic now for S31 series
-1 for really bad sword through Burhnam CGI, -3 for of course a freaking reset button, -1 for again teasing Lorca but not showing him, -1 for Killy not getting killed, -1 for too much soap at the end, -1 for no actual preview of Section 31
Total is: 4/10. Better than previous episode, right about average with rest of Discovery episodes so far.

 

Well, it's not really false. She is dead by the date Saru files his report, after all.

 

Lorca not showing up made perfect sense. The episode was a character arc for Georgiou, and Lorca is not important to Georgiou's character arc. Including Lorca would just have muddied the themes. Honestly, only Michael was really needed, but they found roles for the rest of the cast to play since they were there already.

 

I don't know. If you look at other fictional redemptions, like Darth Vader or Vegeta, or Mirror Spock, they are usually underlings. People who were corrupted by the big bad. In this case Phillipa is the Emperor. She's Frieza. She's Hitler. Does that really work? Would you watch Hitler reformed and working with the Allies to rebuild the world?

"Well, Hitler, you murdered millions of people and when sent back in time was still a ruthless conquer who tortured people and put down democratic revolutions, but was kind of nice to your slave. Want to help with the Marshall Plan?"

But, I'm a bad judge on this because of my disdain for the Phillipa character who, to me, had all the evil edge of a school bully.

 

Why is anyone even paying attention to that guy?

Well, of course she isn't Londo. She started dark.

As for the message... it's Trek-ish to believe that people really are reformable, isn't it? Should we just figure that Terrans are deplorables, end of story?

 

I don't think that's correct. She was the Empress, sure, but she didn't put her society on this path; it was already there. And was she actually the big bad? The Empress has the power to behave the way her civilization thinks an Empress ought to behave. Trying to choose differently didn't go well. Mirror Spock did do a little better with the problem, but we don't know exactly how.

 

That seems to be the message to take away, yes. That no matter what, the other side is always wrong and not worthy of dialog, much less redemption. Honestly, it pains me to see it but it is what it is.

 

The Guardian shouldve Beckwith’d Georgiou and left her in the heart of a sun for all eternity.

 

And Hitler was just a product of 19th C ideas about eugenics and colonialism. So? Yeah, she's the big bad.

In TOS's own Mirror story Spock was the fixable one while they basically just told him to kill Mirror Kirk when he got back with the Tantalus device.

 

I think this was my least favorite of the season so far (and I'm usually pretty positive on the show) for a few reasons.

First: it feels like a waste of time to devote 1.5 episodes or whatever to the mirror universe. In a show where there's 20-whatever episodes in a season a visit to the MU is a fun change of pace. Also, when you have more episodes you get to know the characters a lot better so their mirror versions are more fun and impactful. DS9 did this pretty well. Here, it just seems like a waste of valuable time, and while the character development gets better every season, I think we still need more time with the prime.

Second: I am at best lukewarm on S31 as a show and as a concept. It's best as a one-off or minor recurring thing, and usually as a quasi or full antagonist. It feels like it just spun out of control because as DS9 went on everyone got way too enamored with the CIA/NSA/MI6 of the Federation and now the franchise just can't let them go. It's premise drift for the franchise. I suppose there is a chance that isolating S31 stories into their own series will annoy me less, and that the show could be well done, but nothing I've seen so far makes me think it will be a must-see.

Finally: I agree with posters here that say that mirror Georgiou was accepted pretty quickly/easily by everyone. She is literally space Hitler, and probably worse, and it's just like "oh, that Phillippa, she's a real ball buster, but we love her." I'm not even against them accepting her, just feels unearned.

Oh well. I've really like the season so far; I bet it'll be good to get this weight off the show.

 

It's done. We always knew it was inevitable, and it still was hard to sit through. So yes, I'll have to be honest and admit I liked Georgiou from the get-go, something I feel needs to be clarified because she was such a controversial character and it'll certainly be hotly debated whether she deserved such an emotional send-off or not. The Mirror Universe plot was highly enjoyable even in its predictable nature (it was obvious Burnham wouldn't break), but then again, Terrans are just like Romulans - ever so predictably treacherous. I was finally able to connect with Georgiou in this one after last week when I couldn't escape my emotional distance, and I think the scene of her alone with a sleeping Burnham helped a lot. It was profoundly weird in a good way to see her with her guard down, allowing herself to be weak and just reminisce about motherhood with teary eyes. Overall, I'm glad it happened, because it prepared me for her emotional goodbye to Burnham, and her heartwarming memorial aboard Discovery. Be it Tilly's "redefined the word badass", Saru's admission that her barbs were glorious, or Reno of course being the one person admiring her attitude the most, I loved it all.

I'm a bit sad that the GoF (and they even used the original soundbite when he introduced himself!) never clarified whether Georgiou's experience actually changed history or if it was just mental. "There's a version of you" might mean anything, and I wouldn't put it beyond the GoF to send Georgiou to a "close enough" universe she could safely play with. But ultimately, it doesn't matter, and it ended up being kind of what I suspected it would - a lesson, or a test. Of course, I thought she'd need to learn to let Michael go, but I'm satisfied that it was simply about showing her how she doesn't belong in the Mirror Universe anymore. While her newly found ideas about governance worked out for a lot of autocrats in the Prime Universe, her own world is filled to the brim with opportunistic conquerors on a constant lookout for easy targets. I found her plans really similar to Mirror Spock's reforms that ultimately led to the Empire being conquered by the Alliance. So yeah, our universe rubbed off on her, there's no questioning that, even if she's not a good person by any measure. And I'm actually glad that I'm not writing this series because I would've chosen to show where she ended up, and the entire plot of the episode would've been overshadowed by the post-credits Anson Mount/Ethan Peck cameo.

The short sequence back in the Prime Universe was also a highly rewarding return to our familiar environment, with the usual hilarious barbs from a returning Reno as she barged in on Stamets and Adira for stealing her power, with Book getting in on the action as well as he saw his opening Saru told him to look for. I had a feeling Saru would find himself in trouble with Vance after deciding not to report him before they were finished; I immediately thought of Mendon from A Matter of Honor who was reprimanded by Picard for the same thing, so Vance had every right to be disappointed: Saru did in fact break Starfleet protocol.

Observations:

• There was something unintentionally funny about the Mirror Universe titles being merely the actual titles mirrored horizontally and color-reversed.
• I just realized, but the "Discovery spoilers without context" meme for this episode would include the movie poster for Contact. Georgiou had basically the same experience Jodie Foster did.
• "You made me" were the crucial words from Burnham for Georgiou's lesson. She couldn't ever hope to redeem Burnham because her old self wouldn't even consider trying in the first place. Only after meeting Prime Burnham who saved her life did she realize there could be a different way.
• Considering what Carl said, might the effectiveness of the time travel ban depend on that the vast majority of temporal operatives used him for time travel?
• Killy was very convincing as a dark twist on our Tilly and her honest emotionality, especially when she smirked at being given the green light to do whatever she wanted to Burnham and when she gave her an exaggerated, girly pout after being called the b-word.
• I already know some fans will go ballistic at Discovery traveling five seconds at warp nine to Risa, and will reject any consideration of the fact that Saru had already undergone the vahar'ai when they arrived, a sure sign that they actually traveled for days at least.
• "The name he uses for himself is Vicar. It means substitute." - might be a reference to Prime Lorca? But why would he attempt a coup against the Emperor for being too soft? I'm probably grasping at straws.

 

The search for another place to talk about the Section 31 Series begins. It will save a lot of headache in the future. I foresee discussion of the main character literally drowning everything else out here on TrekBBS. It will always be stuck in Gear One.

 

Regarding Georgiou's redemption, the mistake they made was not redeeming her. It was making her emperor to begin with. While I realize that Enterprise began this trend, the small-universe aspect of the MU is part of why it became so ridiculous. I mean, okay...so in the MU everyone has a double, but they're EVIL!!! But why are they also absurdly jumped up in importance compared to the PU? Prime Georgiou, Lorca, and Michael weren't people with particularly high levels of political power after all. They could have told essentially the same story involving Mirror Georgiou if she was some lower-level heavy within the MU, and it would help the MU to have a better sense of scale. I mean, this was a good two-parter, but are there any MU ships other than Discovery, Shenzhou, and Charon?

 

What gives you pause about the props work? To my eye, the props show much more faithfulness to TOS design than the costuming, sets, ships, etc.

If I were to nitpick the tantalus device, I’d say they’ve made it look a bit unintentionally Klingon, with the octagonal screen and the reddish tint. But that’s a minor quibble. I love that it’s clearly the tantalus device.