Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x09 - "Project Daedalus"

I thought Spock had some pretty insightful (though harsh) things to say about both Burnham and the situation with Stamets and Culber. His dialogue was the highlight of the episode for me.

 

Ultimately, the threat to all life in the galaxy due to Control is kinda similar, though not quite as ridiculous as, Stamets' line about all life in the multiverse dying if they failed last season.

Basically my issue is if it's so damn easy to build a killer AI which wipes out all sentient life, why didn't it happen billions of years ago? It's a big galaxy, and there are thousands of races at any given time. Surely someone out there made something analogous to Control.

 

Yeah. It irks me that the previous episodes put effort into foreshadowing her possession but not establishing her character.

 

I do wish they'd ramp down the escalating Doom Scenario. Doctor Who lost interest for me (and for declining quality in general) as they tried to outdo their doom level to the point that eventually they had some goofy reality bomb. It's not a good path to follow.

 

Check out the recent DISCO novel about Tilly's teenage escapades.

 

Well, I thought the episode was in a way reminiscent of Desperate Housewives 100th episode, where the episode centres around handyman Eli Scruggs (Beau Bridges). We had never seen this character before, but through flashbacks, we learn that he has played a vital part in the lives of the main characters. I thought it was touching and the way we see how Airiam played a similar part in the lives of the crew reminded me of that. It didn’t bother me, in fact, I thought it was a strength.

 

Well, after last week's episode, this felt a bit like a let-down.
Don't get me wrong! This was by no means a bad episode or anything - in fact, I still liked it much more than most of season 1. The main problem this episode had, is that it was probably the most crucial one for the seasons' main arc yet - and it still felt more like a filler-episode than any episode before.

I really DO like the character-focus though! Having one character take the spot-light for an episode is a great Trek tradition, it helps greatle flesh out the ensemble - even the characters that are not the focus - and it was quite well done here. Let's tackle a few things here:

Airiam
I think her story was the best part of the episode. It felt a bit awkward, to have her as a recurring character since 1 & 1/2 season, and only now we learn what atually her deal is. But it was well done. Probably a bit too heavy on the emotional buttons at the end (they literally lost another officer in the first episode, and no one cared) - but all the beats were very well done. I liked all the interactions with the rest of the crew. And the finale - her being overtaken by the A.I., but still able to talk to her friends - was a really well crafted and emtional scenario.

Spock
This was probably my main problem with this episode - they didn't capture the character of Spock. At all. For whatever reason - the writing, Peck's acting - this interpretation is much closer to Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock/Khan or Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. Basically a high intelligent sociopath with anger issues. The brilliance of Nimoy's performance was the always present slight bemusement about everyone else - Spock clearly always HAD emotions, mostly positive one's notably, but he didn't act on them. Quinto managed to capture that a little better in his performance (though was let down by the scripts, where he was constantly outraged). This Spock feels much more like an emotional robot, that suddenly has anger issues. That's not good.

Starfleet and Section 31
As I said, I'm kinda' weirdly okay with their representation of S31 as a regular Intelligence agency gone rogue on this show. Star Trek should be an Utopian Future. But that doesn't mean everything and everyone is always right. I DO like that last week S31 had their open face-heel turn, and this episode already was the Admirals trying to reign them in. That's how an advanced society should handle things: Making mistakes can always happen! It's how fast you admit them and try to correct them that shows how advanced a society is. They should have travelled there with more than one ship though, and on an official mission backed by Starfleet. Having this weird one-ship-underground adventure was just a super awkward set-up.

Control/Section 31
Control is an A.I. that has taken over S31 and begun open fight with Starfleet, and potentially all living beings, and might even be the one responsible for wiping out all lifeforms in the future. Ugh. This is not a good set-up, honestly. There is a difference between "robot uprising", and "robot apocalypse" - the latter one should be much more difficult to achieve in an interstellar community. Also, it makes the Federation look like a bunch of jack-asses - literally ALL other species have advanced A.I. - and some of them are outright evil - yet the Federation's one is the one that goes on a successfull killing spree through the universe?

A.I. and humans
I do like that "relationship to A.I." is now a running theme (again) on Star Trek - it's probably the defining question of our lifetime, it should be handled in our current SF entertainment. But at the same time, it was handled incredible naive and clichèd here - I hate doing comparisons, but I think other shows like "Black Mirror", "The Orville" or movies like "Avengers" managed to get a much better and more nuanced picture of it. Hell, even the alien robot from "Lost in Space" was IMO a better example than "Control" here. OTOH Airiam - the same conflict, but on a much smaller, more personal scale - was incredibly much better handled though. So the writers are clearly capable of that - I guess it was just the temptation of having to save the universe again that hindered them of doing a richer story.

Small Stuff

• So many great beauty-shots of the ship! Well done!
• The whole thing with the Vulcan Admiral being a logic extremist was some grade-A bunk
  
• The part with the mines was ookay, not that great though - The threat level in the vfx-shots and in the bridge-shots didn't match up.
• Also, some of the pacing was off - Burnham is playing chess with Spock during their most important, top-secret undercover infiltration mission of the badguys headquarters? And misses the mission briefing from Admiratl Cornwell? What?
• Also, Burnham didn't help Nhan with her breathing thingy when she was alone with her in a room, and she was struggling to survive? That was bad editing.
  
• The Burnham-Airam fistfight also looked kinda' cheap - Matrix on a budget
• Why didn't they try to beam Airam back to the Discovery when she was floating in space, though? (and directly into a brig?) No Transporters active?
  
• The scary atmosphere on the station was super well done though! I really, really enjoyed that!

Final Grade
Overall, I would give this episode a 6/10. That makes it (for me) the weakest episode this season. But still overall better than most of S1, and an above-averge, very enjoyable episode on it's own, that flunked a bit of it's worldbuiling. But it made up for it with good character stuff for it's original characters, but sadly not as good a job with established fan-favourite character Spock.

 

Another great episode this week 8/10.

Not surprised Airiam is gone, didn't expect Commander Red Shirt to survive though unless they intend to keep her around to return with Pike back to the Enterprise.

We have suspected for a while that Control/Skynet is the enemy and now we know for sure, it also confirms what we all suspected about the Enterprise computer system issues.

Problem is all of the S31 ships are linked into Control even if the crews are not so they are going to have to get the word out somehow.

I do think they dragged out the last scene with the airlocks a little bit too much, halfway through I just wanted both of them to press the button.

I like Cornwell it's nice to see an Admiral that is not a complete idiot, it seems the war knocked some bloody sense into her.

Will go through thread later.

 

Mine also, no music at the end.

 

Yeah, earlier episodes made it seem like Vulcan "logic extremists" were a terrorist organization. How the hell could someone simultaneously be part of a terrorist group and a Starfleet admiral?

 

I suppose I should have been more specific. Even though I was focusing more on Disco and its unique strategic abilities, I was really referring to both the ship and its crew combined, Cornwell’s statement implying that neither of which is Starfleet’s best or brightest. It was kind of a desperation move on her part, as she was about to lose Pike’s support for her mission because of the Admiralty’s use of a minefield inside Federation space. In publicly complimenting his status and that of the Enterprise within the fleet as non-expendable, she simultaneously confirmed to everyone else in the room that they weren’t. I found this both amusing and a risky move, as she risked alienating and antagonizing the entire crew of a ship who agreed to help her as a fellow “fugitive”.

 

The AI may not have been certain its asset was will on board with viable information. Until it could confirm that, it could only assay that Discovery was a hostile threat.

 

It’s a pretty common trope in TV these days. Both of the Walking Dead series have relied on it in the past.

 

Yeah, when you're reading a script as someone portraying a second-tier character and you suddenly find a nice bit of backstory in the script and emotions you never got to express before, its time to rethink that new house purchase for awhile.

 

Precisely.

 

Another thing is:
I think they did an extremely bad job setting up "Control". Like, we have heard characters (Leland & Georgiou) talk about it. But I think they should have shown it to the viewers how it "normally" works before it turned evil. Like, just have a single scene of Leland taking orders from it in a previous episode, to show us what it is.

As it stands, we know literally nothing about Control, how it works, how people interact with it, even what it's interface is, while most of the characters do. Every future interaction with it is going to be extremely awkward - because now the characters have to tell us how it worked and what works different than usual now at the same time, because we, the viewers, have never seen "usual".

Also:
The plot-twist about Control using "deep-fakes" was kinda' funny - that's a thing ripped straight from the headlines - but it's going to extremely date the show in the long-term - like the floppy disks and 70's computer tables on TOS, or the Troi's and Crushers 80s workout session in TNG.

 

That Airiam makeup seemed a little wonky when close up and shown for more than two seconds but I guess we don't need to worry about that any more...

I felt bad for her even though I only knew her as the "horse-bit lady" but they could've at least added a "Nhan!" or two in there at the time of the attack. Maybe, being generous, I suppose maybe that was to throw us off for the surprise at the end. However, sometimes I think of things after the episode like when someone mentioned why they didn't beam them off but their non-reaction threw me off while I was actually engaged in the episode taking me out of the moment.

Oh and during the preview, for a second I thought Spock and Burnham were sharing a deep kiss lol. Now that'd be a shocking twist!

 

Was it really trying to actually destroy Discovery though.
It could have sent all the mines at once toward the ship, it only sent a few at a time and most of them basically bounced off.
From Adm. Cornwell description of the station at the beginning, I would guess that it probably had a lot more offensive weaponry at hand (besides the mines) which it would have begun to use if attacked.

Control wanted Discovery to get there to deliver Airiam, it just didn't want it to seem all that easy and tip it's hand.

 

Maybe it has happened. Countless times. All the main civilizations are roughly analogous, technologically. Maybe they just naturally cull each other with murderous AI after a period of time, and this is what happens to all those dead civilizations.

Then the AI, its mission complete, evolves into NonCorp status as the prewarp species that survive slowly begin to use tools again.

 

I think that is the closest I've ever been with one of my guesses.