• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x12 - "Through the Valley of Shadows"

Hit it!


  • Total voters
    241
I've been voting reboot for about fifteen years now. Though I have no issue treating Discovery as one. :techman:
So you have said...several times...
4TKLJbw.jpg


Though I credit your consistency :D
 
The most implausible thing about any generation of Star Trek is the frequent encountering of aliens (humanoid and otherwise) who speak American English. This tendency goes all the way back to "The Corbomite Maneuver." All of the technological and scientific implausibilities listed above pale by comparison.

(Yes, the occasional episode mentions or shows a translation device, but this only serves to highlight the majority of such episodes that don't.)

Yes the Universal Translator is a magic device (like transporters and the Red Angel suit). But you really want it mentioned every time they talk to an alien? I think the occasional mention is good enough, we don’t need that bit of unnecessary exposition. The Orville has done the same thing. I think they mentioned the translation device just once.
 
Last edited:
That stuff about him fixing his fate in the future is a load of nonsense. What’s to stop him quitting Starfleet and moving back to Earth?
 
They're not really speaking English any more than ancient Romans in a period piece are...
Funny thing here is, the TOS episode with Romans ("Bread And Circuses") goes out of its way to emphasize that they really are speaking English—in order to maintain the "Sun"/"Son" twist at the end—and this is explained only as "an amazing example of Hodgkins's Law of Parallel Planet Development"! (Not really trying to 'prove' anything here with that, I just couldn't pass it up.)

...it is just not worthwhile to make long scenes in a language the audience doesn't understand, especially if that language is harsh sounding made up gibberish. It think the Klingon scenes in the last season proved that.
In all honesty, not just trying to be contrary here...I find Okrand's Klingon language as spoken in the films and DSC to be quite beautiful and lyrical. Never had any issues with hearing whole scenes of it, personally.

This is what I loved about the Klingon-only scene in TUC: They start out speaking in Klingon with subtitles, and suddenly Christopher Plummer switches to English. That was artfully done, although I realize that scene length in TV episodes often doesn't allow for that sort of thing.
Always liked that, too. IIRC, Meyer took inspiration from The Hunt For Red October (released the preceding year) for that. DSC did it earlier this season in "Point Of Light" as well! (They've also used Beyond-type transitions, such as for Saru's first meeting with Georgiou in "The Brightest Star" short.)

If so many people find those elements silly and unacceptable, how are they even Star Trek fans? Some of the very fabric of what the franchise is based upon is represented there.

My point isn't whether any of these things, including time crystals, are stupid fantasy or not. My point is that this is a fundamental part of Star Trek mythology.
I feel exactly the same way. Orbs are silly now? No, that's silly. Orbs were an interesting premise and an effective device on DS9, as were the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens who created them (or did they?). And part of the very reason why is that we always tended to learn more about them through the perspective of the Bajoran faith than we ever did through Starfleet's clinical rationalism. (Yet we learned enough by the latter to keep us aware that the former couldn't necessarily be taken blindly at face value, either. There was a balance, a push and pull between the two that made us question both, and dismiss neither. Damn, that was a good show! One might even say, though perhaps it's an unfortunate turn of phrase in context of this discussion...magical?)

That stuff about him fixing his fate in the future is a load of nonsense. What’s to stop him quitting Starfleet and moving back to Earth?
His nature.

Even more jarring is that's exactly what he wanted to do in the Cage.
Seems like you missed the whole point of that story, which was that by its end he had firmly rededicated himself to, and reconfirmed himself in, the role of Starfleet captain. As Spock says of Kirk in TWOK, it's his "first, best destiny."

-MMoM:D
 
Pike was basically a fantasy hero rescuing a princess from an ogre in that one. :lol:

Of course, this idea fell apart when it was revealed the Enterprise was not in the Klingon War, but in my head canon, that ogre, "the Kalar," was a more human looking Klingon (thanks, Augment virus!) from (really stretching here) House K'eylar, defending an occupied fortress on Rigel.
 
Of course, this idea fell apart when it was revealed the Enterprise was not in the Klingon War, but in my head canon, that ogre, "the Kalar," was a more human looking Klingon (thanks, Augment virus!) from (really stretching here) House K'eylar, defending an occupied fortress on Rigel.
Glory to their House. (Except Alexander)
 
Seems like you missed the whole point of that story, which was that by its end he had firmly rededicated himself to, and reconfirmed himself in, the role of Starfleet captain. As Spock says of Kirk in TWOK, it's his "first, best destiny."

-MMoM:D
Trek characters relapse all the time. Picard realized he couldn't commit genocide on the Borg after he met Hugh, but he's back to his vengeful self by First Contact.
 
Orbs were an interesting premise and an effective device on DS9, as were the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens who created them (or did they?). And part of the very reason why is that we always tended to learn more about them through the perspective of the Bajoran faith than we ever did through Starfleet's clinical rationalism.
Make of it what you will, but I have to say that everything involving the Orbs, the Prophets, and Bajoran religion were by far my least favorite aspects of DS9. Episodes involving those elements were invariably tedious, and the show would have been far better without them.

Just a clinical rationalist at heart, I guess...
 
They could have skipped the story about Sisko's mother and the Prophet, too.

All of that is why I never cared much for DS9. Unpopular though that may be.
 
What a great flash forward scene showing Pike’s ultimate sacrifice. The more this season develops, the more I see a direct connection to the abandoned Discovery in “Calypso”. That is going to end up being anything but some random Short Trek story. Perhaps the auto destruct will be blocked by Control to prevent the orb data destruction, and somehow the presence of the time crystal on the ship will with propel it, abandoned, into the future or maybe Burnham/her mother will send it there beyond control’s reach.

In any event, psyched to see the Enterprise next week!
 
Even more jarring is that's exactly what he wanted to do in the Cage.

I don't think it's jarring that Pike is making a different choice here than he would have during The Cage. Consider how much he seems to have grown since The Cage.

When he's talking with Dr. Boyce he's neurotic, he blames himself for everything that happens to his crew. His crisis of confidence is about the gap between what he wants to control and what he actually has control over.

Fast forward to Disco and he's seems to have closed that gap with his faith. He's serene. He accepts that there are things outside of his control, he accepts that everyone has their own destiny that he was perhaps arrogant to believe was in his hands and his hands alone.

And then the crystal tests that faith in a major way. It basically says to Pike "Hey, you can accept that the fate of your crew isn't in entirely in your hands.. but what about your fate? Can you keep the faith even if you suffer? Can you resist this final temptation to abandon your values in the name of (personal) security?"
 
What a great flash forward scene showing Pike’s ultimate sacrifice. The more this season develops, the more I see a direct connection to the abandoned Discovery in “Calypso”. That is going to end up being anything but some random Short Trek story. Perhaps the auto destruct will be blocked by Control to prevent the orb data destruction, and somehow the presence of the time crystal on the ship will with propel it, abandoned, into the future or maybe Burnham/her mother will send it there beyond control’s reach.

You are saying something I see many other posters say too but in "Calypso" Discovery was not sent into future. It had waited a 1000 years. So after the self destruct fails they will order the ship to go hide and wait.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top