Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x08 - "If Memory Serves"

Intesting. Very good observation. I didn't even notice. But this thematic link is probably another reason why all the plots seemed to "flow" together as well as they did. Even if I couldn't put my finger on the exact "theme" - it was there. Always a sign of good writing.

 

Great episode - though I think the writers could have shunted off the Culber-Tyler C-story stuff to another episode and made that a MUCH more interesting. visceral, dynamic experience!

 

I think that's become a bit of a hallmark of Discovery - they tend to have the A/B stories and then a slow-burn C story that becomes the A or B in a few episodes time (like Tilly and Mae). I think this will happen with Culber too.

 

Another very, very minor addition for "The menagerie"/"The Cage"-nuts like me:
As I said I really, really, really love the original TOS episode(s). "Menagerie" is in fact my single, favourite Trek episode. But one thing is undeniable - they both come from a very straight-white-male perspective. Now to be clear, I don't think they are sexist. The women are portrayed as real human beings, with their own desires and personalities, as women with character in jobs of authority even. But the perspective is undeniably male - all the women craving for the square-jawed hero. A female friend I talked about these episodes simply couldn't really get into them, because she couldn't really identify with the characters.

I think this episode - having Michael Burnham as the natural lead and POV-character, but also giving Veena and her relationships to the others (Pike, Spock, Burnham, Talosians) so, so, so much more depth, while also enhancing Pike's perspective - I think that was handled fucking fantastic. Because it naturally improved upon the one short-coming of the original - while still respecting and loving the original at the same time! Hell, I love Pike even more now than I did back then.

That's IMO how it should be done. I have more female friends watching DIS than any other Trek show previously - and I'm just positively excited to talk about "the cage" with them, and them having such a natural, personal connection to the events of that episode now!

 

A big fat stinking 10.

Talos IV was a wonder to behold! A beautiful homage to the very first pilot. I find it amazing that this is the first time since The Cage/The Menagerie that we visited the Talosians. They certainly did them justice here.

I also appreciated the plot being moved along a little. Red Angel is a female human? Is it Janeway? We also finally saw the incident that stopped Burnham and Spock talking for all those years. Burnham was doing her own thing and moving on, but her calling Spock a half-breed has obviously stuck all these years. It was heartbreaking, even though Spock thanked her for what she did.

I can't help but think with the Discovery on the run, this season may not end well for Pike. I know technically The Menegrie is set nearly 10 years after DIS, but he's going to end up in the chair at some point.

BEEP!

 

Georgiou is the Red Angel

 

I thought that! Knowing what we do about the Talosians, there's a zero chance she actually wiped them out, they just made her think she did.

Unless Mirror Talosians are rubbish telepaths?

 

Just watched the episode and it goes straight in with a 10/10, no messing around here.

It's really looking like Control is the big bad, will Leland and Georgiou join forces to destroy it when they find out or will they find themselves on opposing sides, the Red Angel is either Burnham or Georgiou herself most likely, my money is on Burnham due to Spock receiving the visions first.

Georgiou does seem to be on Burnham's side for the moment and made the point of stating that the AI takes the orders in the MU, all this could lead to S31 having to go underground after Control is defeated, possibly with Georgiou at the helm which would lead nicely into the upcoming Georgiou/S31 series.

At least we now know why Tyler is still there, he's the temporary scapegoat for the compromised Airiam who has been sending out the information.

Would have been nice to see a flashback to The Cage with the current cast rather than the original but I can understand why they didn't, a bit of a nostalgia massage never hurt anyone.

Will go through the thread shortly.

 

Actually it will all end great for Pike and that is the beauty of this episode.

#1 - he isn't going to be hindered in his career as we know he makes fleet captain.
#2 - we now see a much more emotional bond between himself and Vina and it makes his eventual reuniting with Vina even a more happy ending where he gets to spend a lifetime with her. I always thought in the original - hey he gets to be with that girl he liked that he met once. Now that has expanded to he gets to be with the girl he truly loves.

 

That's they I held back and kept the 10 in reserve for episodes like this one.

 

^^In the context of the show, that makes 'more' sense. Cage to Menagerie was never a huge emotional leap - this just makes it more narratively coherent

 

"Star trek discovery is not cannon"

Stick this episode in your pipe and smoke it, midnight's Edge

The salt is gonna be amazing

 

I will be very surprised if they don't go for a Pike/Enterprise show now that we have seen Spock and the tie in with The Cage, all that's needed is the newly repaired Enterprise.

 

I hate this phrase but I'm going to use it for ME, "Delicious fan boy tears!"

 

She started off her career in one of the Australian soaps from the 90s, the same ones that started Kylie Minogues career, it was Home and Away/Neighbors.

They were always shown in the UK, not sure about the US though.

 

Mostly great. The reveal of the memory between Burnham and Spock was basically what had been predicted, but still reasonable and justified. The method on how we got there was slightly forced -- I'd much rather it be something that came out of the characters instead of an arbitrary "price" asked in exchange for magicking away Spock's brain fog, but at least the mystery is behind us and we can move forward.

The re-appearance of the quarry killed the visuals of Talos IV for me. I believe we've seen that location already twice, though the only one that comes to mind is the Rebel Base in the MU, and putting a small crop of plants in one spot isn't enough redressing to overcome it and give my suspension of disbelief something to work with. Even some color grading to put things much warmer would at least have helped (and matched the old soundstage colors more closely as a bonus).

I felt Saru's decision to let the fight play out was a seriously stupid one, and I'm glad that Pike addressed that. I wonder if Saru really took it to heart, however. He's just not himself since he matured (ugh, they keep saying "evolved"), and it's consistent with his behavior on Pahvo when his fear was prematurely removed, too. I miss the wiser Saru that didn't see aggression as the answer to every problem. Poor Culber. Stamets has never been a people-person, and now he's being asked to connect with someone that was always the one doing the emotional heavy-lifting in their relationship. Ouch.

By the end, I was left with the distinct impression of a half-season close, or even that we're coming up on the finale soon, as most of the side missions delaying the crew have been resolved and we can get back on the trail of the main mystery full time. I'm sure the Section 31 plot will continue to slow things down, but we'll see.

I felt bad for Tyler during the accusation. I was hoping that Saru approaching Pike in the hall about the security breach meant they'd try to keep it private until they did further digging, but it seems likely they only did a small amount of investigation before confronting him in a way that tipped their hand to the real mole. Sloppy move, crew! Given that they suspected him of an implanted personality, I was surprised Pike confined him to his quarters rather than requiring a medical exam, again taking a short-sighted approach to resolving an issue as Pike did with Saru's insubordination. Either way, you need him off the bridge, but one is possibly going to provide answers while the other just delays things. It's interesting to see them dealing with the shortcomings of having a Data-like crewmember, which TNG often ignored even when Data did things just like this. I'm interested in the repercussions once she's exposed. I do hope she survives.

The end of the episode was powerful, and felt like a really nice moment with everyone coming together. The preview doesn't seem to flow from it, but the ending at least had me looking forward to more!

She gets worse with every appearance, for me because it's excruciatingly obvious that her plot has a goal to reach and nothing else matters. She's not outsmarting anyone, or pitting her wits against anyone's, or twisting events to her advantage without exercising any official power. Leland and the Admirals all have to be completely incompetent and utterly blind to miss how cacklingly "diabolical" the Unrepentant Evil Cartoon is being in her plans to usurp power. These people in S31 are master tacticians and super spies, or else they wouldn't be here, so having them miss the obvious is a hole in the storytelling and makes every scene with them, and especially her, pull the rug out from under itself. Nothing they do feels like it matters so long as "I'm Getting My Own Show Soon" gets to go around doing whatever she wants because she literally has a destiny to accomplish them. I'd love to be wrong and find out that Leland and the rest of S31 are letting her think she's outsmarting them, but I really, really doubt that's the case. Even if we hadn't been spoiled on this upcoming show, it's still terribly weak writing without believable character motivations; it's just that we happen to know that the motivations are meta-textual ones. It's dramatically uninteresting to see a villain say "this is how I'm going to gain additional power" and then they just... do it, because no one stops them.

It feels like my reaction is supposed to be "Oh, she's so cool!" but she's not clever or cool. The one agent that S31 should be keeping on the shortest leash possible is running around seemingly without oversight and without anyone being warned of her nature (clearly not even in an oblique manner, since they insist on keeping her origin secret). So much for being an Intelligence Organization. If they do go under, it'll be because of how monumentally inept it is during this era, but it won't have been earned. I haven't gotten the impression at all that we're supposed to be viewing them as this naïve, it's just a side effect of the inability to write their usurper as smarter than a smart group of people.

I really hope not. Egads, that sounds like really terrible fanfic. So now I'm worried.

The implication given in this episode that S31 is somehow controlled without military or civilian oversight by an AI is already ridiculous enough. I could have bought it as a massive intelligence database and analysis system, but that's just too far for me. Which reminds me: the probe used SQL Injections against Discovery? I chuckled at the silliness.

At least she's not off the show, I guess, but it's too bad she left the role right before it got something to do. Hopefully we'll continue to see her elsewhere on the ship. She acted well in that small bit we saw (and did a good job with Airiam previously, IMO).

Seemed like a stretch to me, too, but in the end they mostly just kinda stood there and let the main characters do most of the work, so it didn't bother me as much. It's fan service, but it didn't really abuse them aside from making the rare visit seem a little less rare.

I didn't get it either. As a long-time Trek fan, it made me sigh, largely because of the "retro" font, the sounds, and the editing of it. It feels too much like tone/design whiplash and fanservice to do it that way, but apparently a lot of people here loved it. For me, it's another example of Discovery being uncomfortable in the spot it's chosen to inhabit.

 

Sometimes as trek fans we just have to surrender and enjoy

 

That's interesting, for me it was the opposite. It felt like a brash, confident statement that Discovery is here, and it's directly linked to all Trek that has gone before, right back to the very first adventure. It felt like a triumphant moment for me.

 

For once I would like someone to say, “Section 31? What’s that?”