Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x03 - "Choose to Live"

Visual pun alert: Gray's Anatomy seen during Synth body construction...

 

That's so weird. I was just on a forum on an unrelated site that was comparing DIS writing to Grey's Anatomy.
Same thing happened yesterday when "Bobby emerging from the shower" was used here and on a completely unrelated site at almost the exact same time

 

I liked parts of it but was really, really, really, fucking pissed off by the pathetic writing for Stamets. He is a scientist and an engineer but they have him whining when his candidate for the wormhole is proven wrong. He knew going in it did not satisfy all the evidence. A good scientist and engineer would be happy that the idea was fully disproven so they could drop it and work on something that would lead to an actual solution. What's worse about this is he says he wasted time when talking to Book. Bullshit! Proving something is not the answer so you can move on is not wasting time.

I feel that sci fi writing does scientist a great disservice and this is another example. These idiot writers who never even took an advanced lab course in college ( which aint shit compared to real research) write scientists as whiny assholes who can magically do years of work in a second because they are perfect and now they cry when it takes more than 2 candidate root causes. Those in engineering who have had to troubleshoot failures in development might be familiar with fishbones and other problem solving methods. These usually take a team of experts wracking their brains for weeks while also testing many options until they find the cause. If building a product can be so complex, certainly identifying what some brand new phenomenon is would be even more challenging. If real engineers whined like Stamets, they would suck at this. Actually I have met some that do and it really enraged me because they made the whole effort slower. They probably got their work ethic from watching shitty sci fi portrayals of engineers.

 

At the Entmoot why did Stamets have to wait around for ages for the NiVar to tell him there was no tachyons which he already knew and surely had told them in his synopsis

 

A mildly hot take: this was the best DISCO episode in the series so far.

Understated, well written and quietly important.

The music was on point too; that scene with the cryopods moving across space was beautifully orchestrated and sounded majestically theatrical, like something out of a John Williams or Michael Giacchino score.

Well done, get this writer to write more episodes.

PS: I love the character of Rillak. Multidimensional and not cardboard good or evil. She’s pragmatic and acts like a real Federation president probably would, making hard decisions that aren’t always popular but necessary. She’s not stereotypically scheming or manipulative; she’s politically savvy but honest about the politics behind her actions. The writers made a good decision to not make her too easily likeable or unlikeable.

 

I'm still too sour about Eeeeevillll Lorca to get excited just yet

 

Hopefully they don’t go that route with Rillak. I’ll give Paradise the benefit of the doubt since the series has had a clear tonal shift since she took over.

 

The fact the Book in his experience did not see a blue glow: absence of evidence. Maybe it was observable to others?

The fact that the Vulcan mind-melder deduces there were no tachyons seems a bit of a jump because one guy didn't observe them.

Anybody know, by the way, if all these signs do correlate with a proto black hole? Or is it Trek-babble?

 

It was a wormhole not black hole that Stamets was pointing at. Also its not just Book they are going off but also all the data collected from the scene Book was just an extra check (and a plot device to get Book a mind meld)

 

The best episode of the season for sure.

Culber has been fantastic this season but I just don’t care about Adira and Grey. That plot line drags every time for me.

I do wonder if the Trill will forbid them from being together with the host/previous relationship stuff. Or if they won’t want to risk losing a symbiot so they give them a pass.

The Nivar President was clearly shook after melding with Book, I wonder if that will be a plot line going forward.

 

Probably just caught a few glimpses of his memories from the shower that morning

 

I gave it a 6. I might have gone a little higher.
The Gray's Anatomy storyline has not really interested me. I can't even remember why Gray is incorporeal.

Vulcanomulins are even bigger buttheads than they were as seperate peoples..

I just don't like Gabrielle Burnham. I don't find her character plausible. I thought the writers were finally done with Burnham and her mommy issues. She's literally dragged them across dimensions and now space AND time. How long was Burnham's Mom in the future before Michael arrived to give her the time to be a completely truth speaking (and Romulan speaking) sword mastering space nun? I dealt with it in the last season, under the feeling maybe I wouldn't have to as a viewer, any longer.

As a viewer who watches Star Trek, I think it's rational to say I have come to root for Starfleet and the federation. To expect audiences to be cool with a turncoat getting people killed to save someone she owes a personal debt, and the ending which implies its open season on Starfleet personnel provided it is personally and politically expedient, does not sit well with me at all.

I really loved this show in the first two seasons and I liked where it was going the last season, but I am running out of patience with it.


As always, saving performances from the actors though. They keep this alive through the bleak ones.

 

I said the same thing out loud while Culber was doing finishing checks on Gray 2.0.
Gray should have sang "Bring Back My Body To Me"

 

The mind meld was a last ditch effort to prove tachyons as they were not recorded in any scan.
Staments getting pissy .. As said, yes it sucks that a theory you worked on is wrong, but to be so whiney about it is unprofessional. You say okay, and move on.

Oh.. When is a sword through the gut an instant fatal wound? She stabbed the officer in the gut. I mean it hurts and sucks but if you dont have alot of blood loss, take hours to die. Plenty of time for medical treatment. Only instant fatal is heart or head, rest is slower. If she didn't want to kill, as an expert swordswoman, it's easy to disable not kill.
So that part was Crap.
And.. The second the rommie ninjas poped up on books ship.. Uh.. Intruder defense system? Ugh..

 

Yes, that's two instant deaths so far this season that didn't make sense.

Gabrielle preventing her daughter and Tilly from using nonlethal weapons they were trained and competent in, vs swords they'd never handled (or Tilly anyway. Since Burnham was established early on as being well trained in Vulcan martial arts I'll just assume maybe she knows how to sword fight, though I still find it implausible), was criminal. That Captain Burhnam allowed it should get her in disciplinary trouble. Military justice by this point now probably consists of Admiral Vance looking tired, sad and perplexed all at once. He's The Office's Toby of Starfleet. Competent, but what little authority he may have had to do the right thing hampered by staff and those above him. To make matters worse, it didn't even make any point in the plot. Was J'broni not going to come out because her assailants didn't have swords? That didnt' seem to stop her murdering piracy act earlier.


And yes, Starfleet might want to look into why people can just beam aboard their ships willy nilly. Seems like a problem.

 

Everytime I see the Romulan ninjas

 

So...was that turboshaft big enough???

For a moment I thought I was seeing Daleks inside Spiridon. But nope. Just yawning new aliens.

 

I didn't notice that, but I noticed when his body was covered by the sheet and Adira was by his side...there was a bulge in the crotch region.

 

All their security protocols were written by Worf.

 

Yeah, Stamets is making real scientists look bad.

-_-

Again, DISCO writers making StarFleet Medical look incompetent.

Where's the EMH?

Where's the medical team to fix a sword stab? Did they show up 2 days later long after the XO was dead?

And I've already ranted enough about the lack of Automated Intruder Defense Systems.