Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x04 - "An Obol for Charon"

[tomalak301]

Was anyone able to make a connection with the episode and the title? Why did they title this episode the way they did. Was also confused last week what Point of Light had to do with that episode.

 

[Yanks]

Random comment:

"The main flaw in this episode however was somewhat poor characterization. First, Pike's conclusion that the alien megastructure was belligerent seemed very random and was transparently for story purposes to create a short-lived conflict. I came out of that scene thinking less of him, which shouldn't have happened."

This didn't bother me. I had Kirk visions swirling in my head here. If I'm the Captain, I interpret anything that snags me out of warp and holds me like a fly on fly-paper as an immediate direct threat to my ship and crew. He DID listen to Suru and Michael when they provided a viable option to it's intent.

Another:

"More fundamental though is the oddness of the sudden deep relationship between Burnham and Saru. We've had no evidence on camera they particularly liked one another. Their relationship on the Shenzhou was distant and prickly, and even though Saru came to forgive Michael, we didn't really see a budding friendship as we did with Tilly. I understand that for narrative purposes Saru had to be close to someone, and since he knew Burnham the longest (and she is the main character) it should have been her. But this relationship just seems...unearned. Which is a shame, because viewed in isolation, not knowing anything about the arc of Discovery as a whole, this character work comes off a lot better."

I agree here. I had the same thoughts as Michael and Suru were conversing before his assumed death. But.... I finally got a very good emotional performance from Michael so I didn't mind it that much. I wish I could have seen such depth when she was pulling away from Ash. Well done SMG!! They have mended their relationship throughout the series. They certainly weren't at odds like they were early on. I think they truly have brother/sister feelings for each other. If I wasn't convinced before, I am now.

Good to see Reno back on screen.... although I thought her nip and tuck with Stamets was a little over the top. Not too bad though. I enjoy her delivery and dry humor. Nice to see Staments get past his pouty self and become engaged once again. Is Jet going to end up being Discovery's Chief engineer?

A note about "Engineering"... in the episode they said the "spore room" wasn't part of main engineering, but when Michael said she was going to engineering to help with the shields she showed up there... and when the bridge calls engineering, Stamets or Tilly answers from the "spore room".

Tilly.... another knock-it-out-of-the-park performance by Mary. (stands and applauds!!) She's just awesome. So much heartfelt emotion and different emotional states conveyed and it all seems so REAL. You go girl!

Suru... I was watching the scene where he's talking Michael into cutting off his ganglia (sp) and I thought I'd missed something and thought about checking IMDb to see if Doug Jones was still a part of the crew after this episode (lol). Great performance by Doug and more great background concerning the Kelpians. I liked how the short 'The Brightest Star' added to this episode as well. Had we not had that, it may have been too much to absorb. This was the first time Discovery tugged my emotional heartstrings.

Very good "Star Trek" story here. Yes, it's been done before (I tire of hearing that because I challenge anyone to come up with something totally new in Trek), but this was done VERY well and wasn't a carbon copy of another trek episode.

The pacing was welcomed; especially after last week. Only a couple "cuts" seemed a little quick.

I believe we've seen the beginnings of learning why this spore drive can't be sustained in trek. It seemed May's primary concern was that her people that were being adversly affected (killed?) by Discovery's jumping. More to follow I'm sure.

Love how they melded the Universal Translator problems into this episode. Probably the best it's ever been done in trek.

Michael had a couple "I'm Michael and I have to save the world" moments, but it wasn't that bad in this one.

Also enjoyed meeting #1 from the Enterprise. "Cheeseburger and fries" ... lol She will become more intergral in this plot I'm sure. I think the actress player her well.

I also liked, as I did the Klingon hair "fix", how they addressed the holocommunicator "issue" in trek canon. Maybe they should have never went there, but at least they addressed it and we can move on.

I don't know that I can knock this one. A GREAT Star Trek episode in my book and I think Discovery's finest effort to date.

Well done. What a monumental improvment over last week!

A 10 for me.

 

[Noname Given]

I really, really hope one of the things which is fixed in the post Berg-Harberts show is the sound mixing. It's been universally terrible so far, even in the great episodes this season. Dialogue is always mixed low, and music and/or ambient sounds are always playing at the same time people are speaking. It's really distracting, and makes me miss out on at least a few lines of dialogue every single episode.

^^^
The sound editor is mixing the show like a feature film as opposed to a 'TV show' (and yes, the styles are different as I've heard this from two professional editors I know; and one I've worked with (here we've had this discussion about mixing styles for some fan projects I've been a part of.) I doubt that's going to change because the EP's (past and present) all want the 'cinematic feel' for this series.

 

[Noname Given]

I think character credit royalties only apply when the character was written for TV, and if used again in TV that specific writer who created the character would be paid. I don't think the same applies to books or comics, since that is licensed out by the studio itself and whatever is created for those books and comics is already owned by the studio and not by the writers themselves. I could also very easily be wrong about this.

You're wrong. If that were the case then any studio that wanted could do a TV series based on a popular comic book series and not worry about rights or royalties. If you use a specific character from a copyrighted work, you owe royalties.

 

[Gepard]

The impression I got was that the Kelpians believed that if they let this process go one, it would end in madness and horrible painful death; so the custom was for them to kill themselves to avoid that. It's more likely it's part of their biological maturation (IE prior to 'adulthood they retain the 'fear reflex' to survive to 'adulthood' where the Ganglia fall off naturally - but they retain their other abilities and strength.)

The - "This is the natural end of a Kelpians life, and if you let it go all the way a Kelpian will just go insane and die painfully..." was a myth spread by the Baul(ssp?) so that they wouldn't have Kelpians with the ability (and desire) to fight back and change the way things are - and further the 'Priests' (like Saru's father) would just reinforce this so AS SOON as a Kelpian showed these symptoms they would immediately commit ritual suicide - so no Kelpian knows the truth.

Oh shit, they're doing a Pak Protector thing with the Kelpians, aren't they? The Ba'ul are going to turn out to be the real adult form of the Kelpians, and the "harvesting" isn't them preying on the Kelpians, it's them taking select inviduals away to some place they can complete their maturation/transformation/whatever. (This is Star Trek, so they'll probably call it "the next stage in their evolution" or something.)

And since I have my rocket powered crazy pants in today, let's go even further. You know how the Ba'ul obelisk looks exactly like a TOS Preserver obelisk turned upside down? That means that the adult Kelpians are the Preservers. Which means they're also the Red Angels. Those long tentacle clusters on the angels aren't wings, they're the mature form of the threat ganglia – like adult teeth to Saru's metaphorical baby teeth.

I think I just solved the season, everybody.*

*not really.

 

[thribs]

A note about "Engineering"... in the episode they said the "spore room" wasn't part of main engineering, but when Michael said she was going to engineering to help with the shields she showed up there... and when the bridge calls engineering, Stamets or Tilly answers from the "spore room".

I noticed that as well. Maybe on the way she went to check up on them.

 

[cooleddie74]

Kirk didn't seem to often hold much stock in listening to his officers by rank, either. There were times that Sulu or even a junior officer we saw just once in the series were at the conference room table and spoke up early and often, overshadowing the more well-known officers. Sometimes he even invited civilians to sit in and asked for their input.

 

[Nyotarules]

Just to avoid confusion, you mean "The Paradise Syndrome."

"This Side of Paradise" is the one with the spores.

Needs to be renamed Revenge of the spores

I

got the impression that all Kelpians wind up getting harvested before their threat ganglia fall off naturally, so none of them ever knew that they can continue beyond that final supposed near-death “Vaharai” experience

But Sarus' father was still alive, he still had his ganglia..I think.

Saru - Am I the only one who bothered to learn a foreign language?
Rest of the crew - yeah cos Star Trek humans are privileged, entitled bastards

Do you believe humans will be speaking in modern U.S. English 250 years from now? There's authenticity for the sake of immersion, and then there's just disconnecting from your audience and making it more difficult for them to anchor their ability to relate to the crew. Plus, David Bowie is timeless, his words poignant, and as a clearly intelligent woman, Tilly probably finds comfort and solace, a connection in his words as he sings, the emotion in his voice, the message of his protagonists bravery as he hurls himself into the void with no hope of ever returning home, because Tilly knows that even though he sacrificed himself to further humanity's outward expansion, they made it. She's living proof.

We live in the digital age, where music doesn't die because it is shared across the world, and will be taken with us should we reach the stars.

One of my favorite songs, Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, is already 50 years old. Is it really that far fetched?

So you could not connect to TOS when it made up its own music, in the few musical scenes it had, it disconnected you from the story did it? I don't know whether Bowie's music will be timeless, cos none of us will be around in 2256 to find out. Liking music 50 years old is still within the life time of most living humans, liking music that is 300 years old will not be, so your comparison is not the same.
But would be a shame if under a United Earth its major musical influence still came from the British or American 20th century top 40. Next time have someone sing something from Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley or Hugh Masekala, or something from Asia. Show that fictional future humans might have some cultural differences, rather than Earth's humanity turns into a global America.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

This one I give a solid 9! It's hitting the marks of what I'd want to see in a Star Trek series done with current TV effects and production, along with a main story for the episode that had a resolution that was completely classic Star Trek, in finding out about the sphere and what it was doing.

I loved the banter with Reno and Stamets, with Tilly being the middle ground to get the other two back on track. Reno's line about powering a Starship with what she picks off her pizza had me laughing, and that kind of humorous break is what the series needs every so often (along with Pike telling Saru, "Welcome to the Tower of Babel!")

Pike's decision to send his reply in the form of a photon torpedo wasn't out of line to me at all. I felt like any CO of a Starship would think to resort to that line of defense if not presented with a viable alternative (which, luckily, he was).

It was written well, had some good character moments (Doug Jones in this one was incredible!) and is what I hope to see more of this season.

To me, the only step backward slightly was "Point of Light", but only slightly. But the other three episodes this season have been what I was hoping for, and looking forward to the next episode!

(Now I have to go try a cheeseburger and fries with some habanero!)

 

[eschaton]

Was anyone able to make a connection with the episode and the title? Why did they title this episode the way they did. Was also confused last week what Point of Light had to do with that episode.

Charon's obol is a term that the Greeks used for a coin placed in the mouth of a dead person as their fare to cross the River Styx. Given this episode is - to a large degree - about death (both the literal death of the sphere creature, and the fake-out death of Saru) it's somewhat understandable. I'm not sure what is supposed to symbolically be the "fare" for the passage of the dead though. Perhaps for the sphere creature, it's the knowledge that it hasn't died without imparting everything it learned. This is also reflective of the discussion Saru has on his deathbed, entrusting Micheal with his logs - all of the knowledge he personally has accumulated.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

Charon's obol is a term that the Greeks used for a coin placed in the mouth of a dead person as their fare to cross the River Styx. Given this episode is - to a large degree - about death (both the literal death of the sphere creature, and the fake-out death of Saru) it's somewhat understandable. I'm not sure what is supposed to symbolically be the "fare" for the passage of the dead though. Perhaps for the sphere creature, it's the knowledge that it hasn't died without imparting everything it learned. This is also reflective of the discussion Saru has on his deathbed, entrusting Micheal with his logs - all of the knowledge he personally has accumulated.

Exactly. My thinking was that more with the sphere, it was paying it's fare (in the form of disbursing all it had learned and observed) before it completely passed away.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

You're wrong. If that were the case then any studio that wanted could do a TV series based on a popular comic book series and not worry about rights or royalties. If you use a specific character from a copyrighted work, you owe royalties.

That does make sense, but it also describes a separate situation. This wouldn't be like adding Captain America into Star Trek; the engineer in question was one that was created under a Star Trek license, not as its own separate entity. My understanding was that TV writers are owed royalties due to TV writer's union rules and so they kind of *own* their characters, but writers for books and comics under that specific license don't *own* their characters even if they create them, because everything in those books or comics are owned by the original studio, in this case CBS. I don't think the novel writers are owed dues when other writers use their characters within the Star Trek license at Pocket Books, so I would find it even less likely that they would be paid dues if those characters were ported over to the TV side. This would probably be the same reason why TV writers aren't paid royalties when their characters are used in the books.

 

[LJones41]

I think the ending and Saru’s situation save this episode for me. Otherwise, it was just typical Trek. It didn’t have that edge from Season One like last week’s episode did.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Wait, did I misunderstood something or did Reno say that somebody else was chief engineer, not Stamets?

Stamets has apparently never been intended to be the "proper" Chief Engineer.

A display in "Choose Your Pain" (DSC) did list him by that title:

But according to Ted Sullivan, that was "a flub." (Nevertheless, as it was prominently seen onscreen, we might posit that Stamets did act in that capacity during the time when the ship's primary mission was to get the spore drive working.)

-MMoM

 

[Kor]

In the 23rd century, David Bowie and Prince are considered timeless composers of classical music.

Kor

 

[GhostLoveScore]

Yes, she said the Chief Engineer (whomever that may be) told her to (do whatever she came to spore-engineering to do). Or at least, that is what I heard.

The multiple theories on the layout of Engineering and the command hierarchy seem to be bit by bit confirmed; that there is an actual Chief Engineer that we've never seen and that the Spore-drive control room is an Engineering Lab (mentioned in like one line in first season) or also-known-as Starboard(?) Engineering? I've seen this in other threads but don't recall which parts of dialogue it was mentioned.

That makes sense, he never seemed like a chief engineer to me and the room where he is had no elements of engineering. I hope we see the real engineering soon.

 

[Nyotarules]

I love linus!!! I want to see a caitian now!

More Denobulans, Efrosians, Tellarites, Andorians and by now the Xindi should be at peace with the Federations, more alien crew please!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Una McCormick might take issue with that name being called stupid.

I should clarify...the reasoning for calling her Una in the novels was ridiculously stupid in my opinion.

They should name her Una McCormick in tribute

I feel like they're poking fans over the whole Klingon subtitles thing.

Worst moment of the episode when they brought that up. It's franchise management, not storytelling. I'd rather they just say "this is what TOS looks like now, deal with it."

Mount's delivery was so good, I will forgive them.

Overall a much better episode than last week's.

Just rolling the credits would be an improvement over last week.

The pop culture references feel weird. The other shows didn’t really have them which made sense since it’s 400 years into our future.

Why? As has been pointed out pop culture references abound in the other shows. The difference between classical and pop in the passage of time.

Ron Moore has said that he intended, but intentionally did not specify, that the ancient aliens we saw in The Next Generation's The Chase were the Preservers.

Then he wasn't paying attention to "the Paradise Syndrrome".

thought it was a step up from last week, but paced way too fast. not sure the saru/burnham arc is quite where the writers want it to be emotionally, but i appreciate that it’s good feelings they’re trying to convey rather than antagonism like a lot of season 1.

i like what they’re doing here, so i’m going with it.

Is interesting how some say it was too fast and other say it was too fast.

I don't understand why you'd pick mushrooms off a pizza instead of just not getting them in the first place.

Good episode. Fingers tightly crossed that the show doesn't falter.

In group setting sometimes you have to bend to the will of the majority.

How many present day 20 something year old humans have a 300 year old song as their favourite? That scene was too corny

20 somethings who like Beethoveen?

But the point is, for that reason, we have no idea that "Federation Standard" even is English. It's just depicted that way onscreen.

Aren't there multiple refererances rto English being spoken in Star Trek?

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Was anyone able to make a connection with the episode and the title? Why did they title this episode the way they did. Was also confused last week what Point of Light had to do with that episode.

As for Point of LIght, I think that was a reference to Boreth when Khaless says "Look for me there, on that point of light" *points to Boreth" which is where the baby Albino ends up at episodes end. I guess that would be the literal reference. Thematically, I guess the baby himself was the 'point of light' that guides L'Rell and Ash's choices in the episode. You could also lump it together with the signals that appear as points of light, which Michael and Spock are following.

 

[Gonzo]

Stamets was never the Chief Engineer, he is the mushroom specialist.