Lt. Keyla Detmer appreciation thread

I think perhaps that even if someone grew you a new leg from your own DNA, 100% compatible with you in every way physiologically, and expertly attached it, nerves and all, it still wouldn't feel quite right for quite some time for the aforementioned psychological reasons. The fact that it's not 'his' leg and 'is' entirely foreign and required extensive physical therapy to get full function out of it would, I'd think, just amplify that feeling of wrongness. I've never lost a limb so I'm just making guesses and wouldn't be upset if someone with first- or second-hand experience corrected me on any of that.

 

So, in line with the theme I've set for this thread, does anyone think we'll get more backstory on Detmers' life? We know for instance that she got her pilots' license at the age of 12. I for one would like to hear and/or see more about how that all came about.

 

She was probably on a colony world, and became essentially a bush pilot at 12. She joined Starfleet as soon as she could after being sponsored by Admiral Robau on a tour to her colony.

 

One of these years, she gets her own backstory novel.

 

On this I completely agree

 

Personally I like backstories/'secret origins' stories, if they're done well and integrate into the current timescape of the overall storyline. I'd like to, for instance, see the defining moments of her life that made her want to become a pilot, and the moments that defined her as an exceptionally talented pilot. After all she piloted a totally unfamiliar courier craft (Books' ship) into combat against a craft many times larger and better armed than the ship she was piloting, and she did it with seat-of-the-pants manual-control piloting, and kicked their asses -- and she enjoyed it the whole time. Badassery if I ever saw it, and damn right I'd like to see the things that happened in her life to give her skills like those.

 

Robau: I understand you were the one piloting that shuttle last night.
Detmer: Yes, Admiral.
Robau: Walk with me, Miss Detmer.

 

Later to be contradicted by a single line of dialog in an episode.

 

As well as upsetting years of head canon.

 

I like how they highlighted the difference between her and Stamets. Stamets jumping the ship steals attention away from her flying it.

And I like that she knows Katiscat. I horribly misspelled that.

But I kind of wish she'd come up with better haikus for the dinner table.

 

Stamets is bleeding
But all Detmer can do is
Try to make haiku

 

I'm not super high on Detmer as a character but I liked her story arc and appreciated the effort to dive into the personalities and background of these bridge people. I'll be honest, when she first started having those headaches I thought it would be something stupid like Control still alive and living in her implant. I was pleasantly surprised where they took it. It was well done.

 

Keyla's my Disco crush.

 

You'd think with 32nd century tech they could give her a "perfect" replacement eye. But I reckon they won't, cos the cyborg headgear is a cool look.

 

Yup

 

I think Detmer needs healing and choosing not to have the implant. Good story potential.

 

They were doing so well with Detmer in the early part of the season and then that storyline was just dropped. That was very unfortunate because Detmer was one of the things I really liked about early season 3.

 

So, we have the opportunity to explore more? I didn't see it as dropping it so much as allowing it to unpack slowly.

 

I would just like to point out for the 12 millionth time that these bridge characters on Discovery were always meant to be background characters with just a few lines, think: Nurse Ogawa, et al.

We see and hear them more because of the larger relative budget. In certain Trek books on the making of the shows, it can be seen that spoken lines require extra $ and this amount can blow a budget without some care. So with TNG having an inflation-adjusted budget of about $2.4 million and a run-of-the-mill Discovery episode running $8.5 mill, you can see why they'd have some extra cash to show some bridge crew talking.

Fast forward to Discovery season 1, the characters in the background are pretty cool, intriguing, and beg for more highlighting...they really did too good a job with them. So yes, now we're seeing them developed a bit more. I wouldn't really be surprised though if they're never going to be fully fleshed-out characters because they were never meant to be.

Having said that, Detmer has been a standout. Discovery season 3 not only said: "let's deal with our psychological issues on-screen", but they were also brave enough to say we're dealing with it, it got better, but such things do not go away magically in an episode.

RAMA