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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x13 - "That Hope Is You, Part 2"

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How big is it inside Discovery? The ship must be massive.
Yeah, the Burn turned out to be stupid. Go figure. Some of the action was nice. Glad that Nilsson was back at the end.
 
Some additional thoughts:
- I'm glad they've given up on the original 'lower decks' premise of not having the CO as the main character. It hasn't ever worked properly because the stories they wanted to tell consistently required command decisions so the choice maker in the story was the captain. In an effort to wrench the focus back to the designated lead, they constantly had Burnham going against orders, doing her own thing, anything to make her the choice maker instead. Now she's Captain, that conflict is resolved.

- I'm happy there was no temporal nonsense to erase the Burn, I was very concerned they would do that. Also, the Burn had nothing to do with Burnham personally either in cause or resolution. We're learning.

- Discovery may have finally located the one piece of Trek tech which eluded them: the reset button. It feels like they've finally got rid of the hangovers from prior story decisions (Ash, Georgiou, Lorca, the MU, BurnMom, the red signals, the Klingon fanatics, Control, etc) and are ready to begin a fresh story with a ship and crew unencumbered by having to explain or deal with what has gone before.

- the Federation didn't just arise from the ashes in one fell swoop which was nice. Trill rejoining gives Hope (there's the title) without being ridiculous or over the top. Although I'm still sorry they didn't have the guts to challenge the assumption that the Federation's restoration is automatically a Good Thing. Maybe that might come next year.

- The "personal connection" moral seemed tacked on and not really in keeping with the season's themes. I wonder if that was added post pandemic?

- The Terra Firma two parter looks even dumber in retrospect, having wasted two whole episodes on a side quest to set up a spin off, other aspects of the season seemed under developed, especially the Emerald Chain and Adira, who got forgotten about for several episodes.

- Overall, this season was much more even than one and two, no sudden off piste story swerves, no earnest insistence on doing some grand plan that made no sense. And much less reliance on tired crutches like Section 31. In fact, if one mind beaches out Terra Firma (and I will happily submit to that), there is surprisingly little reliance on nostalgia or Trek continuity touchstones this season - a positive step. Discovery seems to be finding a willingness to invent its own ideas.
 
let’s see how many episodes go by before she disobeys Vance ;)
Going to take a wild guess it's roughly the same number of episodes before Kirk decided to disobey Starfleet's orders.

I'm glad they've given up on the original 'lower decks' premise of not having the CO as the main character.

It doesn't feel to me like they gave it up, so much as evolved past it. That's really how it should be. As much as I enjoyed seeing Burnham busted all the way down to nothing and working her way back up in seasons 1 and 2, I'm looking forward to them moving past that in season 4.
 
I'm hoping we haven't seen the last of Saru. Giving his character a mentoring role was a nice touch, but it felt a ittle final.

Doug Jones shaved his head a few weeks (months?) ago and started posting pics of him on Instagram and Twitter preparing for Season Four. Saru is not going anywhere.

Tig Notaru will have a reduced role across Season Four. She has reduced her travelling due to Covid, as she is in a high-risk category, but it also meant she missed doing a planned block of episodes.

as far as I remember Kirk disobeys once in the series, to save Spock. His reputation is unwarranted.

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/how-many-times-did-kirk-disobey-orders.289790/
 
I was ranting last night - visceral reaction - but the thing that I really can't get is any sense around why on earth Burnham is Captain.

Admiral Oded Fehr started off strong. He was going to redistribute crews and balance things out and that made sense. He was having none of their crap.

I know, story wise, that ain't gonna happen. So they do their appeal to stay together. That's fine, it's TV... that's how it works.

What makes no sense is that Burnham being the insubordinate hothead that she is gets demoted... yet for some reason keeps on turning up in briefings etc. The Admiral should have said "What's she doing here?" every time.

Then you have Ensign Wesley Adele whatshername being First Officer, which is just so absurd it hurts. Again they have a Federation they would have had a candidate. I mean just imagine the navy putting an ensign as second in command rather than one from another ship.

Then Burham says something like "We haven't always seen eye to eye" to the admiral. That's the lazy writing that I love. You just kind of imply there's a deep history, of complicated conflict. Of nuance. Not about 20 minutes of screen time together, and by eye to eye she might mean "I'm insubordinate." To even imply she's on some level to even see the Admiral is daft. She should have little to no contact. That's not how chain of command works. Wesley Crusher wasn't down there speaking to the Admirals at Starfleet command. Worf or Geordi weren't. There's a reason.

And then suddenly, she's Captain? WHY? HOW? WHY? WHY? How? Why? The whole federation, he hasn't got a captain for a ship? He's going to promote some low ranking office who's not even in the top command structure, right to the top to manage Ensign First Officer. Do they have no crew in the Federation? (Meanwhile writing out the one actually VERY GOOD character out: Saru.)

Then yeah play the TOS theme because... look over there.

This obsession with Burnham.. this fetish that she must be absolutely everything, all singing all dancing at all times is the undoing of this show. It's like fan fiction, where the author has written herself into it. That's what it reminds me of.

One final thought, does anyone have any info on this... why the absurd holographic story so Saru was Human-looking? I wonder if they didn't want to Kelpians talking at length for fear viewers would confuse them.
 
Not going to lie, I've been, for lack of a better word, hate-watching Discovery for the past few years. I honestly haven't enjoyed much Trek since Enterprise, really, and even that I've not gone back and watched again (whereas I usually watch the other Trek series once a year now, bless streaming)
Then came Lower Decks, which completely took me by surprise, and then this season of Discovery has been almost a joy. To be honest, I think part of it is that they weren't trying so hard to be edgy Trek, the kind of Trek I have to turn off when my kids are in the room, but hopeful Trek.
I'm not saying it's perfect. Guild (Spore) Navigators, the spiderverse glitching, the Wall-E droids, the turbolift tube that's bigger on the inside.....
And I don't know if Saru is going away, but I would really miss him, as much as I missed the Georgiou from the first season.

But none of those things are game enders for me. Good season.
 
One final thought, does anyone have any info on this... why the absurd holographic story so Saru was Human-looking? I wonder if they didn't want to Kelpians talking at length for fear viewers would confuse them.
I assumed it was the glitchy holodeck program making everyone look like something that wouldn't freak out the kid, and keep the holodeck illusion going.
 
Correct! We've had to make these kind of things up a zillion times in TOS-ENT without putting blame on 'stupid writers'...

We blamed the stupid writers all the time...

I am surprised we haven't seen any Denobulan yet. ?

They got a mention in the mirror universe 2 parter.

It was like if Superman became a Federation starship.

These are a few of my fave-or-rite things...

Can the Superman starship also be a TARDIS? With the proportionate strength of a spider? That can use the force? Infected with the protomolecule? Shaped like the Orville? Filled with aliens designed by Jim Henson? Introduced each episode by Rod Serling? That you can't take the sky from?

ok just started watching, I hope Stamets redeems himself, at the moment he is a terrible Starfleet officer. You do not put loved ones before the mission, at least Worf went through a struggle to 'do the right thing', Stamets will let the whole fleet burn as long as Hugh is left alive. He should have taken that job on Vulcan

I really don't feel like Stamets needs any redemption for that extremely believable reaction.

And Stamets' official adopted daughter son offspring!

Though I don't remember them getting a say in that...

I'm still sorry they didn't have the guts to challenge the assumption that the Federation's restoration is automatically a Good Thing.

That strikes me as more cynical and contrarian than "gutsy".


Seriously? That list includes things like disobeying MU starfleet by not killing people, being rude to (not disobeying) the idiot in Trouble with Tribbles, leaving the Galileo crew behind at space normal speed (not disobeying), and the movies (how many episodes in were they?).

And I don't know if Saru is going away, but I would really miss him, as much as I missed the Georgiou from the first season.

Doug Jones says on Ready Room that he's excited to see where Saru goes from here, so presumably he'll be there in some capacity.
 
It would be less believable for the shields to suddenly be pummeled to 12%. I mean, just a few more shots by sheer accident, and no more spore drive for the 32nd century!

Timo Saloniemi
Or recognizing that Discovery was super valuable they gave her super duper shields. I can buy that - fits the situation.
 
I was disappointed by how much Stamets was side-lined in this episode and barley featured. I hope in season 4 the writers don't just drop what happened between him and Michael.
 
Not in a ship that’s big enough to accommodate them.

And... that’s a bold claim in a franchise that gave us Picard’s evil twin, brain theft, Crusher’s sex ghost, space hippies, a transparent rip-off of Mass Effect’s Reapers, and basically the entirety of Voyager.
Candle ghost is definitely up there with the salamanders. The TOS stuff I saw for the first time after I was old enough to know that show has loads of camp 60s nonsense so doesn't bother me but I honestly don't remember Picard's evil twin. Do you mean Riker ?
 
Uhm, the only other episode in this list I feel justified is A Private Little war and even that was just a general order, not a direct one, disregarded within his powers. The rest of the list is extremely biased (just talking about the TOS episodes).


One final thought, does anyone have any info on this... why the absurd holographic story so Saru was Human-looking? I wonder if they didn't want to Kelpians talking at length for fear viewers would confuse them.
no, I think they just wanted to show Doug Jones without makeup for a while. Nothing wrong with that.
 
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