Spoilers Speculations that came true

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I never see anything coming so I was frequently surprised

 

[Jadeb]

Is there actually a problem here? It's not like guessing the reveal made the episodes or even the twist, not work.

I'd say it's a problem for a show that built its first season so heavily on twists. They don't have to rely so much on twists, or use them at all, really. They went to that well too often, IMO. And there's a whole spectrum between "unguessable" and "obvious." Discovery fell too far into "predictable."

 

[gblews]

I see there has already been a lot of discussion about Ash/Tyler the character, the surgical procedure, the battling consciousnesses, etc. But what struck me most was how early on we, the viewing audience, saw this whole situation coming. So when it was finally revealed in the show, it was really no surprise at all. Did CBS just not do a good enough job of hiding this reveal?

The production staff stated that they deliberately dropped major hints that Tyler and Voq had some type of relationship. There was the episode where L'Rell tells her boyfriend that he could win his place in Klingon leadership, but would have to give up "everything". Voq then disappears from ensuing episodes (and eventually the rest of the series).

Next episode or two, we're introduced to a brand new regular character who is a prisoner on a Klingon ship, which also happens to have L'Rell on board. Coincidence? The hints became more and more pronounced to the point that even I knew Tyler was Voq prior to the reveal.

If the staff had wanted this to be a complete surprise, they'd have i don't know, not dropped massive hints?

I also seem to recall that when Discovery ended up in the mystery zone, we quickly latched on to the idea that they had transported to the mirror universe. Did the producers spill the beans on this? I can't remember at this point. And did we guess the revelation about mirror Lorca ahead of time?

Prior to the season starting, or maybe a few episodes in, Jonathan "Fatmouth" Frakes, dropped the spoiler that DSC would go to the MU in the first season.

After that, it was just a matter of when the ship would go there rather if. So when they jumped into an unknown area of space, naturally...

As for Lorca, people here began speculating that he was really from the MU almost as soon as his first episode ended. I think the immediate speculation started because Lorca just wasn't a warm and fuzzy character like all other Trek captain characters. But again, the staff went out of their way, by their own admission, to drop hints about who Lorca was right up to the point of the big reveal, or more accurately, the big confirmation. .

I didn't see anyone guess that Culber would die, or that the Emperor would come to the MU, or that the Enterprise would show up in the season finale, although I admit I never went into the thread devoted to if and, I presume, when, the ship would show up.

So, Jonathan Frakes notwithstanding, the staff can keep a secret if they want.

 

[Jadeb]

I suspect they deliberately had Frakes "leak" the MU visit to drum up interest, just like they used the Enterprise to drum up interest in season two. Both were placed strategically (some might say cynically) to keep fans coming back for the familiar at times when viewership might wane. And, hey, it worked on me.

 

[Refuge]

I refused to believe Lorca was a bad guy. That didn't help me in the end though.

You were not alone in that. I thought he was a rotter, a compelling rotter. We were all in it together though when he went down that mirrored path to cartoonsville.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The big rumours were Ash/Tyler and Mirror Lorca, both proved to be true.

How I wish Mirror Lorca wasn't true. My favourite character and they turned him into an OTT supervillain.

 

[SPCTRE]

I never see anything coming so I was frequently surprised

haha same here, it's a good way to enjoy tv shows

I have to watch out for getting spoiled by the wife though, she connects all the dots, all the time (pro tip, never watch anything resembling a murder mystery with her)

 

[Rahul]

Things I predicted correctly:
(go watch my older comments)

• Both Cpt. Georgiou and Cpt. Lorca being dead at the end of the seasons (because of the high-profile actors portraying them...) - I knew that before the very first episode aired
  
• Cpt. Lorca being the evil british surprise villain of the first season
• The Federation wanting to destroy Kronos at the end of the season via McGuffin, and Burnham talking them out of it (though I didn't suspect the stupidity of that being possible with an off-the-shelf hand-held device from an alien minority district on Kronos)
• Culbert dying (he was the exposition character to show Stamets is gay, but he needed to be gone so that we can have future story arcs for Stamets - Culberts was essentially all minority/gay/love interest to get fridged characters combined. He had no character beyond that. NO WAY he would have survived!) - I was just surprised it happened so early
• Burnham being fully re-instated and becoming a bridge officer at the end of the season, and the series thus returning to a much more traditional approach
  
• The end of the season doing a full reset for the characters and the worldbuilding, and the war with the klingons not having any real conequences

Things I was wrong about:

• I thought the season would end with Burnham staging another mutiny to save the klingons - just this time being successfull with the whole crew behind her, against an "evil" Cpt. Lorca
• Lorca being just another mad Mirror universe guy trying to dispose his superiour - I genuinely believed he would be a bit more complex character, like Admiral Marcus or something, a true believer/warriour of the Federation that will just go too far to protect "the greater good"

Things I was completely surprised by:

• T'Kuvma dying right in the second episode - that was a genuine good surprise!
  
• Mirror Georgiou surviving in the our universe - still don't know how I feel about that.
  
• Rekha Sharma dying by the Tardigrade
• The ship of the dead and Kor being defeated in the mid-season finale (I thought that would be the big final battle of the season)
  
• Having TWO(!) of your main characters be secretly evil turncoats, that get foiled because they are in love with Burnham so much...ugh
  
• The spore drive still being functional at the end of the season (I hoped they would find a way to forever restrict the access to the mycellian network - especially after they talked about "threats to the entire Multiverse")
• The klingons easily winning the war against the Federation - still think that was stuuuuuuupid

Things the Internet predicted for me:

• Ash Tyler/Voq: Once the theory started, it was pretty much undeniable true. But I would have never guessed it myself
• The crew going to the Mirror Universe. Didn't think they would do that, expecially not in their very first season.
  
• The Enterprise appearing in the season finale (I thought they would hold off on that for at least another season)

 

[Kane_Steel]

I 'speculated' that Lorca would be a villain and tossed away unceremoniously, and tadda...

 

[seigezunt]

I was on to Voq early on, but I know no one will believe me. Just the matter that you had such a major character suddenly vanish ... and then this other guy shows up.

But I'd theorized that the real Tyler was the guy that gets killed early on in "Choose Your Pain."


Section 31. *sigh* Sad to be wrong about that one. But I still think the "31" in the ship's number makes no sense as theories go.

 

[eschaton]

I was on to Voq early on, but I know no one will believe me. Just the matter that you had such a major character suddenly vanish ... and then this other guy shows up.

I actually have comments on Jammer's site where I said before Tyler even appeared I believed that Ash=Voq. It was all based upon that final Voq scene, which made it clear he'd have to give up "everything." Plus his intense staring at a picture of Burnham. And that Ash Tyler, this supposedly integral member of the main cast, hadn't even shown up until the 5th episode.

 

[AlanC9]

I'd say it's a problem for a show that built its first season so heavily on twists. They don't have to rely so much on twists, or use them at all, really. They went to that well too often, IMO. And there's a whole spectrum between "unguessable" and "obvious." Discovery fell too far into "predictable."

Was it all that obvious? It was obvious here, but that's because the people who were pushing the theory had a solid case, based on the clues mentioned on this page.

Would I have come up with the theory on my own? I don't have any way to know that..

 

[Lord Garth]

The whole Ash/Voq thing is not something I would've thought of on my own. I thought something was up with Ash since he seemed to be in pretty good shape for someone who'd be held captive for seven months -- not to mention still alive! -- as Lorca had pointed out, but I didn't immediately think "Ash is Voq!"

I didn't buy into that theory for a long time. I don't remember when I started changing my mind but I remember what my mode of thought was. "Hmmm, we haven't seen Voq in a while! We're running out of episodes for him to appear in if the Klingon War is supposed to be wrapped up this season. Maybe Ash is Voq, like they say after all." Then once Ash saw L'Rell when they were rescuing Cornwell in the mid-season finale, I completely bought into the idea.

 

[DigificWriter]

The things that Trek fans see as being the "surprises" of Discovery weren't actually meant to be big series-changing revelations, at least if you look at how they were handled and executed.

 

[Lord Garth]

The things that Trek fans see as being the "surprises" of Discovery weren't actually meant to be big series-changing revelations, at least if you look at how they were handled and executed.

I think it's too soon to say what "series-changing" even is yet. At best, I'd say this is about Michael Burnham's journey, regardless of the ship, the Captain, or the Universe. So, if something happened to Burnham, then it would be series-changing. Every other change short of that would fall into the parameters already established by the series.

It's a broader, more flexible status quo than anything we've had in a Star Trek series before. DS9 comes the closest for anything previous.

 

[Donker]

I predicted Lorca would be an evil mirror universe person, but I was wishing it wasn't the case because it's such cheap hack writing and Lorca was actually a good Star Trek character.

The major prediction I got wrong was that I was going to assume they would learn how to deal with the Klingons in the Mirror Universe, then somehow when they go back to the Prime Universe, Burnham finds herself waking up on the day of the morning of the Battle of the Binary Stars and using her knowledge to avert the war then Burnham being assigned to Discovery.

Honestly they should have gone with that anyway because the last two episodes were absolute hot garbage in regards to plotting.

 

[DigificWriter]

To clarify my comments from earlier:
Trek fans are treating the "Voq is Ash" and "Lorca was from the Mirror Universe" things as if they were intended by the writers to be these huge shocking twists that fell flat because people had already guessed them by the time they'd played themselves out, but if you actually look at how they were handled narratively, that's not the case at all.

 

[Gepard]

Trek fans are treating the "Voq is Ash" and "Lorca was from the Mirror Universe" things as if they were intended by the writers to be these huge shocking twists that fell flat because people had already guessed them by the time they'd played themselves out, but if you actually look at how they were handled narratively, that's not the case at all.

Didn't you spend weeks stubbornly insisting that there was nothing at all to this "Ash is Voq" guesswork, and citing the denials of cast and crew in order to prove it?

 

[DigificWriter]

Didn't you spend weeks stubbornly insisting that there was nothing at all to this "Ash is Voq" guesswork, and citing the denials of cast and crew in order to prove it?

Yes, I did, and I'm willing to admit I was wrong.

However, that has nothing to do with my point, which was this: the way that the writers handled things like the Ash is Voq thing prove that it wasn't intended to be the huge "shocking twist" that fans seem to think it was, and therefore it doesn't actually matter that it "fell flat" because people were able to figure it out ahead of time.

 

[Gepard]

However, that has nothing to do with my point, which was this: the way that the writers handled things like the Ash is Voq thing prove that it wasn't intended to be the huge "shocking twist" that fans seem to think it was, and therefore it doesn't actually matter that it "fell flat" because people were able to figure it out ahead of time.

And my point (well, one of them at any rate) is that they spent an awful lot of time denying the Ash-Voq connection – as you well know since you cited their denials – for something that wasn't supposed to be a surprise.

Claiming we were never intended to not see this coming is a clumsy excuse for crummy writing.