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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x04 - "All Is Possible"

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    137
He's in Red Shirt Heaven watched over by St. Connolly of the Debris Field
that or he's Holographic Command Training Death Dummy. They need one.
I hope the writing staff bring him back later and explain how the Armstrong saved him.

The writing staff shouldn't be that callous about not saving lives.
 
I hope the writing staff bring him back later and explain how the Armstrong saved him.

The writing staff shouldn't be that callous about not saving lives.
I don't mind them killing characters. Stakes should be high, and this episode was definately a call out to The Galileo Seven, but they should make the deaths believable. None of them in this season have seen so, and it's not like they have to worry about violence ratings, as a streamed show. They could have decapitated that commander on the Credence, pulverized the station commander from the first episode, and this guy, i dont know, snapped neck maybe. It just comes off like you can poke the current Starfleet staff with a rolled up paper towel and they'll die.
 
Except for the problem of that there was no regression (and this would have been extremely unlikely unless the whole UFP was destroyed) and the Burn couldn't have caused that.

All member planets were left intact with highly advanced technology (and SF/UFP databases on those planets and leftover stations SURVIVED)... only ships (and some stations) that had active Dilithium and running Warp cores ended up destroyed (majority of the fleet).

Plus, one cannot (canonically) reconcile 800 years post 24th century... along with commonly stated lines that 'everything is far more advanced in the future compared to 23rd century Discovery' and the fact that what we have seen barely looks like 80 years passed since the 24th century... and in some cases, various uses of subspace technology from 24th century are no longer seen.

Doesn't exactly jive.

They should have provided a clearer explanation behind this obvious problem. But since they hadn't done that... I would instead prefer the writers make more effort in creating stories which actually don't ignore past technologies but in fact USE them.

The Giotto reference from S3 was mostly described as a metaphor in providing 'hope for the future'... not technological regression.

I mean, you'd have to pretty much ignore how the galaxy is in shambles and doesn't even have insterstellar communication for most of the Quadrant. I mean, Burnham didn't even know the Federation still existed for much of Season 3.

If you don't see technological regression in the show, I'm not sure what could convince you of it. Oddly, I applaud it for its realistic take on it. Its not that the stuff is FORGOTTEN, it's that without infrastructure all of these fancy toys fell apart. So you have the butterfly people that don't even have a functioning satellite network.
 
I don't mind them killing characters. Stakes should be high, and this episode was definately a call out to The Galileo Seven, but they should make the deaths believable. None of them in this season have seen so, and it's not like they have to worry about violence ratings, as a streamed show. They could have decapitated that commander on the Credence, pulverized the station commander from the first episode, and this guy, i dont know, snapped neck maybe. It just comes off like you can poke the current Starfleet staff with a rolled up paper towel and they'll die.
I mean, that is the universal truth of the Redshirt.
 
Did everybody forget about the body of the poor cadet with that chest wound?

We know Seven of Nine was able to revive a dead person that was dead for 73 hrs after initial death thanks to Borg Nanoprobes. I wouldn't be surprised if we had Federation Nanoprobes by this point.

Crusher suggested the use of 'destructive breed of nanites' to fight the Borg... only trouble is, at the time (mid 24th century), it would have taken about 2 weeks to produce them.

So, Nanotechnology existed in the 24th century... just 'conveniently' forgotten.
Oh and we shouldn't forget that Wesley was able to make his own nanites which eventually turned sentient.

It definitely didn't feel like 73 hrs has passed by.

Lots of cutting in between scenes. The trip to the nebula and back probably took up most of the travel time.

The fact that they're willing to bring back the Bajoran Chief Security Officer in Lower Decks after he died in an explosion.

Why can't they save that poor cadet?

Beam his body and shuttle back up.

Use the Nanoprobes on him.

It's not like his head was smooshed into chunky salsa.

The brain seemed intact, the medical personnel on the armstrong should try to save his life.

We don't know if they have. On VOY, nothing was officially explained in terms of how the crew managed to expend more shuttles and torpedoes than what the ship had, but some of us did posit that the crew simply beamed the wrecked shuttles (at least those they could) back aboard, harvested them for raw materials and made new ones.
Same with photon torpedoes... making the casings and most of the stuff for the torpedoes is pretty simple, so that just leaves antimatter.
VOY crew could have traded for it with other species off-screen, or they found another source of omicron particles to increase their antimatter reserves.

Similarlt here, its possible the Armstrong beamed the wrecked shuttle and the cadet's body back aboard and revived him... but, since nothing was stated on this ... and as I said before, in the 32nd century, when people are proclaimed dead...they likely remain dead (no extra attention goes into trying to revive them).
 
Similarlt here, its possible the Armstrong beamed the wrecked shuttle and the cadet's body back aboard and revived him... but, since nothing was stated on this ... and as I said before, in the 32nd century, when people are proclaimed dead...they likely remain dead (no extra attention goes into trying to revive them).
More like the writers like killing off people for cheap drama points instead of going through the effort to save them when it was easily do-able.

Don't they have a manpower shortage in the 32nd century?

Saving that poor cadet could've done ALOT for morale.
 
People die. Rodenberry's vision. No mourning. Move on.
Not everything Roddenberry suggested was a good idea.

Save lives, keep people happy.

If you were that poor cadet who died with a chest wound, you'd appreciate it if somebody used every piece of medical knowledge to revive you and not just leave you to die on a cold frozen moon.

Whatever happened to "Empathy"? I thought you were all about that?

Or does it not apply to random Redshirts?
 
Not everything Roddenberry suggested was a good idea.

Save lives, keep people happy.

If you were that poor cadet who died with a chest wound, you'd appreciate it if somebody used every piece of medical knowledge to revive you and not just leave you to die on a cold frozen moon.
I'm dead. Don't care.

Happiness is not as important as accomplishing the mission.

This is Star Trek. Star Trek is Gene's Vision, for good or ill, these things will happen. Including death.
 
I'm dead. Don't care.

Happiness is not as important as accomplishing the mission.

This is Star Trek. Star Trek is Gene's Vision, for good or ill, these things will happen. Including death.
Mission was accomplished, they were rescued by the USS Armstrong.

The USS Armstrong can go save the dead cadet now.
 
I mean, you'd have to pretty much ignore how the galaxy is in shambles and doesn't even have insterstellar communication for most of the Quadrant. I mean, Burnham didn't even know the Federation still existed for much of Season 3.

If you don't see technological regression in the show, I'm not sure what could convince you of it. Oddly, I applaud it for its realistic take on it. Its not that the stuff is FORGOTTEN, it's that without infrastructure all of these fancy toys fell apart. So you have the butterfly people that don't even have a functioning satellite network.

I'm not ignoring anything.
I'm saying that its utterly ridiculous to think a regression would have occurred given what we've seen.
What 'infrastructure' are we talking about exactly?
We're talking about technology that can self-repair and self-maintain and all of planet based technologies would NOT be using Dilithium... otherwise, Kaminar would have been a planet half blown apart (just to name that) - and yet, it looked pretty vibrant by the end of Season 3.
ALL former and remaining member planets were left INTACT with their technology intact as well - they had replicators and programmable matter.

The Butterfly people powering their satellites with Dilithium was just a bit dumb and there's no evidence this would have been done everywhere (in fact, Earth for example had no issues like that - and it wasn't mentioned their planetary shield satellites were powered by Dilithium).
In fact, satellites would have been far better running off a combo of solar and advanced fusion - but then again, not all species did things intelligently - and again the butterfly people satellites was a tad... meh... also they had 125 years to redesign those satellites since they probably had to know the Burn happened and that using Dilithium would have been ill-advised.
 
Overall, I have conflicted feelings about DISCO Season 4. None of the episodes thus far have knocked it out the park for me. I should feel better about this season because the writers are doing some of the things, I’ve long wanted them to do, by focusing more on the supporting characters, doing more world building, and actually having Discovery help rebuild the Federation. They even have pushed the big mystery into the background-though they couldn’t stop themselves from going there in the first place (there was no need for a big mystery, rebuilding the Federation was enough of a hook)-and so with it being more like hanging over everything. If whatever caused it is underwhelming or disappointing (like the Burn was for me) it might not drag down the whole season because the focus hasn’t been so much on the crew finding the solution-yet-but with them coping with a lot of personal problems, and now political problems.

I know what you mean. Previous seasons have been more volatile so far as quality - most in the "okay" to "bad" tier (YMMV), with one or two clear spikes per season (If Memory Serves being an obvious standout in S2, for example). I've certainly noticed a shift in consistency this season, but the show isn't breaking out of average. Spreading the attention beyond Burnham is appreciated, but I'm weary of 2-3 episodes from now of anomaly hijinks accelerating into high gear and focus on supporting characters evaporating.
 
"New Eden" was and probably remains peak DSC and I wish we had more episodes like that even if they don't contain crossover and legacy characters from other series. They really hit a home run with that one and showed that when they apply themselves they can give us exciting new Trek that still feels like Classic Trek and gives us all the feels associated with it while depicting new characters in a current production.
 
"New Eden" was and probably remains peak DSC and I wish we had more episodes like that even if they don't contain crossover and legacy characters from other series. They really hit a home run with that one and showed that when they apply themselves they can give us exciting new Trek that still feels like Classic Trek and gives us all the feels associated with it while depicting new characters in a current production.

This again.
 
The good: Very strong “traditional” shuttle crash plot, reminiscent of the Galileo 7, and also strong diplomatic plot on ni’var, although the conclusion seemed a bit too easy and the first interaction between burnham and the president came out as a big confusing to me. I keep liking a lot the new president, which again proves to be an interesting character, and also the Vulcan one, whose interest in saru is promising.
nice to see kovich again, as I anticipated last week Tilly is leaving, I wonder if permanently or only for a while and also if this is the setup for the rumored academy series.

The bad: Book’s plot seemed tackled on without really belonging to the episode, especially as it kinda negates the resolution gained in the previous episode; the camera movements were VERY distracting, something that irked me to no end in the first two seasons but was incomparably better since season three.
The Orion makeup still sucks.

Observations: Grey looks different now. I also had some issues understanding some of the dialogue, (especially his and adira’s) not sure if it is an issue with the episode or just with me being very tired today.
I also kinda expected the whole shuttle incident to be a hologram simulation that Tilly was not aware of, but it was not the case.
was that cadet a tellarite or what? With discovery’s approach at makeup it’s hard to tell.

I’m giving it an 8 even if I feel it’s not a full 8.
 
It is probable that the dead cadet was recovered. Tilly's shuttle at the end of the episode was the UFP11, the same one that crashed implying that it was recovered, repaired, and restored to service.

It feels that to me that starships don't have a dedicated fleet of shuttles, that shuttles are shared between FedHQ and the fleet.
 
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