Spoilers Ash & The Internet

[YellowSubmarine]

I thought something was fishy with Ash from the his first appearance. In fact, I thought that he would end up working with Mudd to cause trouble for Lorca. OK, that's not a big mental leap, since that was the whole shtick of the Klingon torture scene, which intended to turn people against one another, but when he (after being tortured for a long time), stood with Lorca, I thought something more fishy was up.

I also thought of Voq turning human from the moment L'Rell told him he would have to give up everything.

That said, Ash being Voq didn't ever cross my mind, I even rejected the theory, and was spoiled more in the sense that I didn't completely like it that the theory was true. It would have worked better without the Internet I guess. It was still done very well.

But it was telegraphed pretty clearly:
* L'Rell says her boyfriend Voq will give up everything. Aboard the USS Shenzhou, surrounded by human bios. And he's gone from the series.
* L'Rell appears with Ash as her new boyfriend. Something's fishy with him. And there was something up with the way Lorca was taken.
* L'Rell's politics tell me she wouldn't be up to having sexual relations with a human publicly, and wouldn't want Voq finding that out.
* The Chekov tribble had been suspiciously placed there from episode 1. Er, 3.

I don't count the Internet investigation with Javid Iqbal, or Latif being announced as playing a Klingon, as those weren't dots we were supposed to connect, but the above ought to be enough to at least suspect him being Voq.

I guess it felt too incredible, especially using surgical procedures, for me to accept it as a theory within the realm of possibility.

 

[Awesome Possum]

It’s been heavily foreshadowed, I think they wanted us to suspect he would turn at any moment, causing tension for his relationship with Burnham. The actual twist was that Ash didn’t know he was Voq.

Or it’s all a distraction for the Captain really being from the MU, which is going to be the real reveal.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

I guess it felt too incredible, especially using surgical procedures, for me to accept it as a theory within the realm of possibility.

The "let's squish a Klingon into a human suit" bit (or whatever the hell it was supposed to be) was way over the top. There has to be a more plausible way, but I doubt it would have been splattery enough.

This wasn't a water-drop reveal, it was out and out spoon feeding with the writers too busy patting themselves on the back for their nonexistent cleverness.

 

[ITDUDE]

No idea but I really thought the damn tribble was going to play into it!

For sure. Per Mr. Chekhov
"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
Now, we may not have seen the last act yet. But damn. A tribble, a klingon spy. That chekhov's gun should have fired by now. UNLESS, there is ANOTHER Klingon spy on Discovery. Oooh, quick, everyone go rewatch every episode so far and see who has NOT been near the Tribble yet!

 

[Refuge]

I have absolutely no idea of how I would've 'organically' viewed it, given my limited one universe reality of being influenced by various media - sigh. However mirror Refuge might have a different story...

 

[Longinus]

Remember what Sigmund Freud said: "Sometimes a tribble is just a tribble."

 

[skip bittman]

I was too distracted by yelling "It's Clem Fandango!" whenever he appeared.

 

[AndorianAle]

I was too distracted by yelling "It's Clem Fandango!" whenever he appeared.

When Ash was in the worker bee and having trouble, I was so waiting for Burnham to say "Can you hear me?" and Ash replying "Yes I can hear you!" in frustration. Sadly, a missed opportunity.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I wouldn't have guessed it just because I am biased against twists I think are bad writing.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I think they purposefully water-dropped it to us from day one. It was about execution...not about SHOCKER SURPRISE RED WEDDING!!!1!1!!!

TOO SOON, MAN!

R.I.P Sweet, beautiful, Robb Stark

 

[cultcross]

The actual twist was that Ash didn’t know he was Voq.

This - personally I felt the show was deliberately hinting heavily at Ash being a spy - I remember saying:

Oh, and obvious spy is obvious.

during the watching thread for Choose Your Pain. The twist is that he wasn't, at least as far as he knew. Overall, I thought that was nicely handled, although the surgical procedure seems a bit hand wavey, and to draw yet another Stargate parallel, reminded me of their early episode The Enemy Within in which the Goa'uld 'essence' remains in the host despite no physical parasite, for shocking twist value (something they never repeated).

 

[Refuge]

As to how it was handled? I think it was the usual Discovery 'cheat'. It played on our sympathies (and Michael's) that he was the victim of male sexual abuse. Oh how we sympathised and praised the writers. Except that was fake. The story went a direction that he was a simple, complicit spy.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Maybe Into Darkness would have been more successful if they admitted Benedict Cumberbatch was Khan from the outset but heavily promoted Bandersnatch Cumberwhipple as John Harrison.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Probably because the whole thing is pretty implausible.

Arne Darvin says "hello".

 

[Longinus]

Arne Darvin says "hello".

Sure, but he was revealed by simple tricorder scan. My SO is not terribly knowledgeable with all the finer details of the Trek universe, and to people who are not familiar with the augment virus thing the idea that you could alter something that looks like a Discovery Klingon to a perfectly normal looking human in a level that it could fool their medical scans just does not occur. It does not seem like a plausible possibility.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Fair point, but I imagine that it can be hard to make a sci-fi franchise with 29 seasons of television and 13 movies in the canon to be immediately and totally accessable to new comers. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. I remember getting into Doctor Who and trying to assimilate as much of his 50 year history as I could. It was daunting and occasionally confusing but it never affected my enjoyment going forward.

And McCoy's tricorder is from 10 years in the future and knew what to look for.

 

[Lord Garth]

Fair point, but I imagine that it can be hard to make a sci-fi franchise with 29 seasons of television and 13 movies in the canon to be immediately and totally accessable to new comers. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. I remember getting into Doctor Who and trying to assimilate as much of his 50 year history as I could. It was daunting and occasionally confusing but it never affected my enjoyment going forward.

I can vouch for that.

In 2013, I finally decided to watch Doctor Who to see what the Big Deal was about. Everyone I knew in Real Life who was a sci-fi fan seemed to be into it. I started with the new series. 26 seasons of Old Doctor Who was too much to watch up front, so I classified that under, "I'll get to it later" (I've seen some of it since, but not a lot). I never had any trouble keeping up.

In fact, when they switched from David Tennant to Matt Smith, it even felt as if the series was re-tooled and re-launched (which it was), so I could've started right at Season 5.

I think as long as you give viewers enough information to know what's going on in the Current Series, whatever the franchise is, that should be enough.

 

[The Wormhole]

reminded me of their early episode The Enemy Within in which the Goa'uld 'essence' remains in the host despite no physical parasite, for shocking twist value (something they never repeated).

Actually, there was still a physical parasite within Kawalsky, you can see it drop out of his head after the deactivating Stargate cuts his head open. It is actually specified in the script to be the symbiote.

In fact, when they switched from David Tennant to Matt Smith, it even felt as if the series was re-tooled and re-launched (which it was), so I could've started right at Season 5.

The change from Tennant to Smith also had changing showrunners at the time, Russell T Davies left and Steven Moffat took over, which is why the show changed as drastically as it did. With new showrunner Chris Chibnall taking over from Moffat this year, we can expect a similar re-tooling and re-launch.

 

[David cgc]

Actually, there was still a physical parasite within Kawalsky, you can see it drop out of his head after the deactivating Stargate cuts his head open. It is actually specified in the script to be the symbiote.

Yeah, it wasn't like the Zat thing where they just pretended they never said it could disintegrate things, for the rest of the show it always took some kind of exotic technology to successfully remove a Goa'uld beyond a scalpel and some forceps (the weirdest being "Continuum" where we finally see the way the Tok'ra did it was using a machine to pull the whole creature out through the opposite end of the brain, which seems... invasive).