Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x11 - "Su'Kal"

This x1000. For any story, not just Trek.

 

Nope. They were in a war and emergency situations. They don't have the luxury of covering the night shift.

 

Yeah, that is kind of weird, you'd think they would make a point of teaching him about how to function outside of the holodeck, instead of keeping him ignorant of everything outside of it.

I didn't really take it as him being scared because he was Kelpien, but that he was scared because he was mentally a child.

I really enjoyed this one, the stuff with Su'kal and the stuff on Discovery were both pretty good.
The visuals inside the Kelpien ship and outside in the nebula were absolutely gorgeous. The monster was especially cool looking.
It was nice to get to see Doug Jones out of the makeup for once. I think is one of the only times I've ever seen him not covered in make-up of some kind, the other things I remember seeing him in are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the original Hellboy movies, Pan's Labyrinth, and Fall Skies and he was in make-up in all of those.
It was fun getting to see Tilly in command, the scenes with her and Osyraa were especially good. I actually found Janet Kidder as Osyraa a bit more impressive this time.
The discovery of what caused The Burn was a big surprise. I'm very curious to see exactly where that is going, and how they are going to explain Su'Kal effecting the entire galaxy, or at least the area controlled by the major alpha/beta quadrant powers.
One other thing I've been meaning to mention, is that I love the parents and child relationship that building with Adira, Stamets, and Culber.

 

I continued to be astonished by how so many keep asserting that Tilly has the exact same level of personal development and experiences she did when she first walked in Burnham's quarters and started babbling about having a roommate. And even back then, she wasn't a blank slate, but sometimes the complaints about her inexperience come off as if she was completely unaware of the basics of her own job.

I'm not surprised, though. Saru naming her as his XO was bound to be controversial. But I'm starting to feel like that there was next to nothing she could've done that would've been enough for most of her detractors. Nothing short of an absolutely stellar, flawless performance of truly Mary Sue proportions would've been acceptable. Even the tiniest misstep, omission or unforced error would've been construed as a sure sign of her fundamental unsuitability for any command track position now and perhaps ever, and I suspect many would've even blamed her personally for an unavoidable and unforseen vis major. The Soyuz could've fallen straight out of a temporal distortion right in front of the Discovery without warning, she could've made the same suggestion Data did and it would've been undeniable evidence of her incompetence. But if she made Riker's suggestion, she'd be a Mary Sue because she has no business being that competent while so young and inexperienced. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

They managed to jump AT WARP in season 1. Plenty of choices. Staying was foolish.

 

Actually we do, because we just saw her being less competent at command then a first year command track ensign.

War is when you most want the night shift covered because the enemy doesn't just attack during your daytime...

Hell, that brings it's own questions, with a crew of 90 how are they even running the ship? That's basically 30 on active duty at any one time, and that's nowhere near workable for a ship the size of discovery...

 

I grew up watching TNG. It was always obvious when a character was being introduced to die, and never worked thanks to it being so obvious. The difference is Discovery is not episodic, it has no excuse.

Discovery has its plot extending the whole season, so if they want to kill a character without telegraphing it, they can, and must, characterize early as possible. Actually, Voyager managed it with the guy with murderous urges, establishing over several episodes before killing him, so Discovery has no excuse. Same goes for the story's environment regardless of whether it is episodic.

Good writing means setting aspects up early to use later, it's the whole Chekhov's Gun thing. You don't introduce new tech and abilities the moment they are most convenient, because it comes off as contrivance to get the writing out of a hole. Worse, not only is the cloak setup at the time it is most convenient, they don't even do anything worthwhile with it other than buy a few minutes. For a moment I thought we might get a cool submarine battle. With a little change to the plot timing they wouldn't even need the cloak since it adds nothing of value.

Why would she need to raise them again? The Scimitar was able to run cloaked with shields up. Why wouldn't they snap back in place automatically since they must have been at battle stations, why would the station in charge of defenses leave them down? With transporters being as easy and fast as they are in the setting why don't they have passive anti-beaming tech like what Adira hacked together, or like what Book's planet uses?

This is just supposition, but a second Burn risks breaking what remains of civilization. It should be an existential threat for civilization which everyone keeps in the back of their mind at all times. There are probably loads of planets too fearful to risk joining the Federation because a second Burn would sever connections which they would become dependent on. They can't risk that dependency.

If people could trust their fleets and interstellar connections won't suddenly disappear, perhaps due to Burn defenses or killing Su'Kal, then it might help in re-establishing civilization.

She could have said the cloud must be the source of the Burn and it would have made just as much sense. What aspect of a giant ball of dilithium indicates it is the precise source of the Burn as apposed to anything else? And, given they knew the location, why is she saying that's the location? We know it's the location because that's where they were going. They also made it clear they don't care about the Burn source, they care about the child, otherwise they would have investigated three or four episodes sooner.

 

They were, which is why they shouldn't have jumped to the end with Tilly's story-line and instead slowly showed her going through the steps to become a competent command officer over the course of multiple seasons.

 

There was a Vulcan poet in Cardassia in either the 22nd or 23rd Century.

Security on the bridge was rare in TOS. The picture from DM is not a common example

 

Ok, when?
I’m not saying I’m sure it never happened, but I’m sure I can’t remember a time it did.

they didn’t need to jump o the planet just yet, they needed some time without being shooter upon to finish repairing their shields. They could have literally picked any spot in the galaxy, finished their repairs there and then went back to the planet.

 

no it wasn’t. There were almost always one or two extras near the door.

 

It's the future. They probably don't need more than the bridge crew and a few sturdy engineers on call at any time. Especially now since they have autonomous robots doing the rough stuff.

The farther in the future you go, the less crew you likely need. I wouldn't be surprised if they have holographic crew as well, plus they have a super-smart hybrid AI capable of running the ship herself (although they might not know that yet).

Star Trek III showed us a Constitution with like six old guys running it on 90% automation. I always imagined that most of the Discovery crew were just scientists doing whatever. 90 is probably way more than they ever need.

 

His outfit looked very bajoran as well.

 

There it is, Culber explains it all in a few seconds, somehow a kelpian mutant can create emotional shockwaves throughout the galaxy by getting scared?

there could be more to this, su kal might have been a failed experiment to produce energy from dilithium?

 

Yeah, Burnham probably knows all about the Bajorans from her frequent activities with them in the year we didn't see. Culber could've learned about them in the months since arriving in the 3100s. Or not, it doesn't matter, since Burnham is the one who identified his species and he identified Burnham's species as Trill, a species he, of course, knows from earlier in the season.

And, as stated, it's likely the Cardassians are a known race in the 23rd century (they were certainly known to Vulcans and were mentioned on Enterprise), and the pre-Occupation Bajorans may have been a known quantity as well.

 

I think this was just a pretext to show us, Doug Jones, without make-up.

 

An episode that states you can't do X followed by an episode where they do X?

I've been going episode by episode of TOS and so far none have had an armed extra by the door. Granted I'm only up to Season One Episode Six.

 

It was probably his vahar'ai that triggered the burn

 

I was talking about boarding an enemy vessel when it has shields up.

thinking of it, they might only come up during red alerts.