Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x07 - "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"

Nah, parties still include drinking, dancing, music and hook ups. And probably will until the end of time.

 

[FONT=Helvetica]I think Mudd's resolution makes no sense in the general context of the series (the war versus Klingons) but it did make sense in a 'this is a light-hearted homage to older Star Trek standalone' episodes kind of way.

Personally I enjoyed the episode a lot, but I've always been a sucker for slightly less serious standalone episodes in serialised shows. BSG had some really good ones in Season 2 that also added to the shows story and characters. This one does the same.

My main problem with the show is how poorly they far in the background the war is. It really doesn't feel like there is a war going on at all other than people referencing it or the Klingon scenes. BSG and The Expanse bring that 'at war' feeling alive way better. [/FONT]

 

I'm counting on it.

 

Don't think the show is really about the war.

 

Wow. When I read that my mind automatically added the distinctive voice of Mudd from TOS. It sounds just like him!

 

They haven't done enough to telegraph it for me. They'd better do it soon if Tyler is going to betray them. If they just spring it out of nowhere it will be annoying.

 

This was probably my favorite of the episodes so far. No issues with the stream yet, either.

 

DSC is one syllable different from DS9. No one seems to have a problem with that.

 

In After Trek, they said he was a real actor with a disability.

 

Did Mudd know Stamets was 'in the know'? In the final loop he angrily tells Stamets 'you cheated!' If Mudd knew, he must have known Stamets would do everything he could to stop him. I thought this was a bit confusing. Would have liked it better if Stamets revealed to Mudd that he was outside of the loop at the very end. Also, what I missed a bit was Mudd referencing 'selling' Burnham to the Klingons when they walked to the transporter room at the end. I think both things got lost in editing. In any case, it was a terrific episode.

 

My point is we dont know.

Therefore its impossible to depict.

 

Don't they have the same syllables, at least in English?

 

Not brother. They just grew up together.

 

Stamets admitted to Mudd in the second-to-last loop that he knew everything and was the navigator for the spore drive. Mudd had already contacted the Klingon ship and had taken control of the ship, but was forced to make another time loop when Burnham ingested the dark matter right after revealing how much she would be worth to the Klingons. So Mudd, in that last time loop, knew about Stamets knowing everything, and knew about Burnham's worth.

 

Random musing: the first thing I thought of seeing Mudd in his rabbit-like Andorian spacesuit, and with his time displacement device on his arm - was that of the white rabbit with the fob watch, from Alice in Wonderland.

‘I’m late, I’m late - for a very important date!’

 

Why do they need to make every episode of this show so cluttered? There's a love story sub plot, there's a space whale with a space ship inside, there's a magic crystal device, there's magic dark matter balls, there's a diabolic villain and his lover and her father.

"Cause and Effect" was actually a fairly simple story.

I wish Discovery would be more focused and move a little slower within each episode. When you try and jam pack every episode with "stuff" there's less time for each character and you have to take liberties with the script to make everything fit in. I like how Mudd's wife and father-in-law just show up out of no where. Do they have a spore drive too?

There's too much "Magic" in this show.

The writing is on par with Star Trek Into Darkness. There might as well be magic blood that brings people back to life and transporters that let you go from planet to planet.

 

Exactly. Mudd's hand was forced here: he had to do the final loop despite knowing that Stamets would stand in his way. And eliminating Stamets right off the bat would have been one of his priorities - but to accomplish that, he'd first have to walk into the trap where Stamets was waiting.

Although does that work? The loop is 30 minutes or so. When the heroes tell Captain Mudd that he has won, Mudd waits it out. He apparently only waits for a couple of minutes, though. Why did he only march to the bridge at T=28 min? Taking control of the ship did not take him quite that long in every loop - say, during the previous loop, he supposedly gloated in Lorca's Ready Room for longer than said couple of minutes.

Or are we to think that Mudd waited for longer than that? Or that he terminated the final loop ahead of time, being so certain of his victory?

Timo Saloniemi

 

He didn't want to eliminate Stamets, he needed him to operate the spore drive.

 

Not necessarily. We're messing with time here - when Mudd resets he is back in his ship, in the gormagander ready to put his plan into action. Theoretically he is physically exactly the same, which means at every reset, his body (including his brain) is physically no more exhausted than when he first appeared. There could theoretically be a psychological component where the mind has difficulty functioning with this strange freedom from sleep, but sleep itself is primarily a physical requirement, so it doesn't apply.

I would say the exact opposite. DSC flows quite well, similar, as has been mentioned, to DS9. STD sounds choppy and awkward, even outside of its other connotation.

It had to be a significant amount of time, otherwise Stamets couldn't convince Burnham to convince Tyler to convince Lorca to find Stella and rewire the captain's chair. As for why? Obviously, he has to go through the motions of gaining control of the computer first, or Lorca would just shoot him. That accounts for some of the time. The rest could be explained by the loop being ended prematurely, though it kind of felt like Mudd didn't really do anything so much as just let a deadline pass (IE, the loop only continues as long as Mudd hits a button before 30 minutes, and only ends if he doesn't hit the button in that time frame). I'm not sure what else he could've been doing.

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On the episode, most of what I would say has been said, but I will reiterate a few things.

I love the twist of a time loop plot that doesn't directly follow the person in the loop. (Even though they kind of cheated a bit in the way Burnham's dance was driven by her conversation with Stamets which she never actually had)

I loved Burnham's characterization throughout the episode.

I agree Mudd got off a bit easy considering everything he knows about a top secret military project. I also find the idea that DSC has horribly marred the memory of poor, misunderstood Harry Mudd utterly laughable. This Mudd is perfectly in line with everything we've seen before.

I will never, ever understand people who claim to be Star Trek fans and then instantly dismiss a technology concept as stupid and ridiculous for apparently no other reason than that they don't like the sound of it. Ooh, a time crystal, it's so horribly stupid and absolutely nothing like Iconian gateways, bajoran orbs, the guardian of forever, slingshotting around a star, mind sifters, behavioral reprogramming, doomsday machines, borg, perfect androids, mind controlling games, dilithium crystals, heisenberg compensators, holodecks, and just keep going forever. IT'S SCIENCE FICTION, for christ's sake!

 

That's your idea of "gone wild"?

Each to their own, I guess.