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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x07 - "Unification III"

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    247
I really liked this one. The biggest surprise was Burnham’s mother showing up as a Romulan nun and serving as her advocate in front of the panel of inquiry. From the little we’ve seen of Gabrielle, I think radical candor probably suited her personality. I thought the Vulcan who pointed out all the holes in Burnham’s theory about the Burn made excellent points.

Burnham and Book are now a couple. I’d predict that he will eventually join the crew in some sort of unofficial position like explorer consultant.

It is nuts to put Ensign Tilly in as first officer when there are undoubtedly 70 odd older and more experienced officers on board but she’s a main cast member. Whatever.

It’s also nice to have confirmation that Vulcans and Romulans unified, albeit with ongoing squabbles between the two cultural groups. There are good and sufficient reasons for Earth and Vulcan to withdraw from the Federation and stability is not nothing.
 
9-10, really great episode.
I don't have a problem with 1st Officer Killy, What seemed to me is that Tilly is the glue that is holding this family together after the jump, and having her as 1st shows Saru wants somebody by his side that he trusts will do the right thing, and will bring the crew together.
Nice to see some of what happens with the greater galaxy and other species, though as said, I'm sure there was a file that was marked Read Me that brought people up to date on the politics and general disposition of the galaxy.
Mother dearist was a bit of left field, but they rolled with it well, and the "tough" parenting segment was quite well handled.

and on the Saru need love section, I think he REALLY hit it off with the Vulcan Presidente..!! :luvlove:
 
A little shaky, but I really loved the overall tone and the intent for the episode. 9

Some other observations before reading the comments:

  • There's a special password/secret handshake/cryptic ritual that no one can deny? Not terribly original.
  • I would have thought that MB's reunion with mom would have had so much emotional weight that it would have taken up an entire episode. This was a little bit of a let down.
  • Nonetheless, it was interesting to see mom being the one questioning MB's character.
  • Another great Saru episode. I loved his rapport with the president.
  • I'm OK with Tilly making a jump in authority, although maybe there could have been a better explanation. Maybe Saru could have made her his adjutant, which in the current Federation grants her a certain amount of command?
  • The exploration of the Burn seems to be a little too simple. I wouldn't might a little more techno-babble.
  • I would have preferred that the forum could have taken place on the planet.
  • Did they leave out the destruction of Romulus because they don't think people would have seen Picard or to have protected Picard's story while filming Discovery?
  • It's nice to know that the logic purists in any time are assholes.
 
I don't have a problem with crying or showing emotion. I'm a highly-emotional man.

What I have a problem is that the writing often relies on melodrama rather than earning their emotional moments... tears or otherwise. Like Airam's funeral. How can I grieve with the crew when the show did nothing to make me as the viewer care about Airam?

The show uses crying as a means to gain audience sympathy without doing the work to earn that moment for either the characters or the audience.
This doesn’t make sense to me. Everyone cries, but no one expects total strangers to cry with them, I don’t see a show trying to gain sympathy from an audience, I see real people reacting to real situations, realistically. Crying doesn’t need to be “earned” because it’s an emotional response.
 
Disappointed the Discovery doesn’t have a new effect when it jumps after the retrofit. I was expecting the nacelles to circle the ship while the rest was also spinning.

That makes sense but think it would have worked better if she was to reveal that to him.
Speaking of Spock, we still don’t know what happened to him. The JJVerse gives us one story but that doesn’t really mesh with what we know in Picard. Hopefully one day we get an answer.[/

Given the number of alternate timelines, his fate can be whatever you would like it to be.
 
I did NOT want Tilly as number one, but they handled it way better than I expected. The engine room scene was pretty strong moment with vibes of Dead Poet's Society.......maybe my favorite scene of the episode.

Everyone is going to get hung up on First Officer Tilly, aren't they?

In a universe where an academy dropout can become Chief Engineer and a literal terrorist by Federation standards can become a First Officer, promoting an academy graduate who shows a lot of potential to be acting First Officer is pretty low on my list of potential grievances.

These pretty much mirror my feelings here. Also, there's another piece to Tilly's promotion that is worth recognizing: the fact that the *show* recognizes that it's unorthodox. Stamets looks utterly baffled at first and says that it makes him uncomfortable; I think we're supposed to see the choice as a reflection of Saru's character and his attachment to Tilly, in the midst of extraordinary times.
 
Yeah. What of the Remans? Those poor people are always forgotten.

Eventually there will be an episode that mentions them again, even if it's just in passing. Each showrunner has a different view on what elements should be ignored (Chabon was by his own admission anti-Remans) but we'll get something some day. Just like a Sybok reference. Some day. :)

The Remans were a stupid idea concocted by a possibly high John Logan for an incredibly crappy movie. They were completely cardboard villains who the audience had absolutely no sympathy for. I highly doubt we’ll see them again.
 
Hold on, this episode has just blown the lid on the TNG combadge. They had built in holo recorders that worked as body cams, and they could store footage from it as part of their personal log. That's the only explanation for the holo recording of Spock that Burnham watched: Picard must have been recording that conversation in the caves, and that's canon ;)
 
Finally - back on track.

I was mad about last week's episode because I thought it just threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. This week was wholly satisfying.

My points:
  • I don't know that it can be overstated that Doug Jones is a fantastic actor. I feel like this gets lost because he gets a lot of the buzz around his makeup, but, he just downright owns every scene he's in
  • Glad to see Admiral Vance not angry for once and allowing the crew to at least start looking into the cause of the Burn
  • Lovely nod to the late Anton Yelchin with the USS Yelchin
  • Got a little misty-eyed seeing Leonard
  • Love the mention of Absolute Candor from Star Trek: Picard
  • Sort of wish they addressed the destruction of Romulus and Spock's effort to try and save the planet, but, no big deal
  • Since Discovery comes from a pre-Balance of Terror era and they wouldn't know what a Romulan looks like, I wish they had taken a moment to explain the deal with the Romulans looking like Vulcans beyond just a quick reaction, but not a huge deal
  • I'm glad we got to see Gabrielle again since it was a low-hanging fruit held over from the last season, but, is this it? Is the show now considering her story wrapped up and moving on? If so, not handled well, IMO
  • Character arcs in this episode worked well; they were set up and resolved by the end
  • I honestly didn't miss any of the Georgiou stuff this week; I'm curious, but MORE curious about focusing on moving the needle on the Burn story
  • Why is Book still around? I feel like he kind of served his purpose already and is now being shoehorned in like Tyler was (though I like him a lot better than Tyler)
 
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How about disabling 32nd century Starfleet holograms, tasked with matters of security during a time a crisis, just by blinking at them?

Not even close, IMO. I think the explanation was actually pretty good. There’s still exploits in windows that have been there decades.
 
And you won't get any argument from me on that. Berman was a horrid creative producer who took all the sexy out of Trek, making it much more stuffy filling it with dull humans. I'm hardly ever going to defend his era.

So, respectfully (genuinely not trying to be a dink, just curious)...you don’t like the Berman era and you clearly don’t like the Kurtzman stuff....are you actually a Star Trek fan?

Because that’s like 80% of the entire franchise.
 
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So the Romulans not only forgave the Federation over the supernova thing, they seem a lot nicer now and even wanted to stay in the Fed while the Vulcans wanted to leave. I can only assume that the rest of the Romulans in Picard will not take to recent revelations about a certain group in their government very well in Season 2...
Let's just say that Picard's combadge was recording, and that the video was a reconstruction?
If combadges were on "record" the whole time, I can think of a few things in the TNG era that should have been different. Riker's trial for one thing in killing that alien in some episode, they should have just pulled up his combadge records.
 
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