Burnham probably should've beamed away when she was in too much pain to be any good to Zora, but it was totally in character for her not to. And Zora doesn't seem the type to beam anyone around against their will, assuming she even has that capability.
They knew about Zora's potential emotional instability before setting out on their mission. Couldn't they have assigned a Betazoid professional counselor to handle this? Like a Zora-whisperer? Or maybe given that task to either Dr. Culber (who has proven to be a highly effective counselor in his own right) or Grey, who has already established a rapport with Zora, before leaving for Trill? There are MANY people who could have more effectively and reliably kept Zora on the right path through the crisis. Does Burnham have to do literally every fucking thing on the ship?
The Admiral should have ordered a contingency, considering the potentially disastrous nature of an AI mental breakdown to the entire crew.
There's no way any Starfleet captain would've allowed anyone else to take that job unless they were immune to heat and very good at talking to computers.
That's what a captain does in literally every other Star Trek show. Janeway was a bad ass action star, despite being a science officer background. Kirk did everything from negotiate, to beat the crap out of aliens, to go on espionage missions. Picard was sent on an espionage mission as well. Since when do captains delegate?
I understand why she stayed conscious initially. But when she was about to die, there was no reason not to order a transport into the buffer. Especially since Zora was the one that released everyone else.
Heh, the scene actually reminded me of a childhood cartoon, from the pilot of Thundercats, except the cartoon had better logic for why the captain couldn't go into stasis with everyone else.
That's what a captain does in literally every other Star Trek show. Janeway was a bad ass action star, despite being a science officer background. Kirk did everything from negotiate, to beat the crap out of aliens, to go on espionage missions. Picard was sent on an espionage mission as well. Since when do captains delegate?
Well, I have not watched Star Trek: Discovery in a long time, I drifted away after episode 5 of season 4 which I actually thought was a good episode at the time… I bought the whole season as soon as a I could, but only got up to episode 5 before just losing interest. The whole of the Discovery series has been a bit hit and miss like that for me so far entertainment wise; I want to watch it and love it because it is Star Trek, but it is often a bit too melodramatic and Broadway/stage show like... I feel like I am watching a generic sci fi show with Star Trek labels and over dramatic/expressionate thespians rather than an actual Star Trek series. I do not watch any space based sci-fi but Star Trek, I watch Doctor Who but it is quite different in format, so trying to make Star Trek like other space based sci-fi is *really* off putting to me as I’m not interested in the genre generically. I do often get the feeling with Discovery that I could be watching a random sci-fi series which is not Star Trek, and this is what my main problem with Discovery is so far I think - I just don’t like random sci-fi shows, I like Star Trek and spin-off productions made by people who know how to write for Star Trek instead of just producing generic space opera’s.
Anyway, I heard today that old Discovery episodes are still out performing the newest Star Trek series, Strange New World’s, so the latter half of season 4 of Discovery must actually be *really* good to maintain such high levels of popularity amongst the fanbase. I do however hope that Paramount don’t cancel Strange New World’s too soon and decide to invest all of their creative energies and finance in to Discovery if SNW’s is really performing so badly in comparison, but I guess that the production team/studio need to invest their money in to whatever is the most financially viable of the series.
Please bare in mind that when I talk about Star Trek I often go off in to random and convoluted tangents. As I am months behind you all with Discovery I am probably going to do this and get a few replies saying how wrong I am about my theories for the rest of the season as I’m guessing that everyone else here has seen the whole of season 4 and could potentially spoil it all for me *really* easily if they wanted to.
Anyway, on to the episode…
The graphic of the Burnham family tree was a nice opening for the episode, showing our very own Strange New World’s Spock! It also contrasts very well with the closing scene of the episode which I will talk about later.
I haven’t spoken about this before as I have not felt the need to share my thoughts about Discovery much, but the whole Mycelial network thing makes me feel slightly uncomfortable on a technological level. First of all, this is almost a ‘god mode’ like method of travel throughout the Star Trek universe which surely other species would have found out about and exploited at some point. I understand the science behind ‘biological’ mycelial networks as I know quite a bit about how these types of networks function in the ‘real world’. I know how ‘mycelial networks’ are fungal networks, often interconnected with plant and tree roots for a mutual beneficial symbiotic relationship. I know that the largest living organism in the world in such a fungal community connected via an intricate microbial Mycelial network stretching several kilometres. Flora are also thought to ‘communicate’ by such networks due to how they can change chemical signals and PH levels in soil etc. I have also seen posters on transport stops in ‘intergalactic neighbourhoods’ advertising community ‘mycelial networks’, encouraging people with a shared interest in such networks to get together and travel in to other dimensions as a result of ‘spore jumps’… make of that what you will, and each to their own. People are free to do whatever they want in the galaxy as far as I see it as long they don’t harm any one else, themselves and don’t inadvertently break any ‘Federation’, ‘Starfleet’ or other planetary laws in the process. I do however know that spore drives are actually *forbidden* and the technology is classified as beyond top secret by the Federation. I seem to remember that the use of spore drives also damages the mycelial network which it relies on itself, so it’s use should be avoided. Was this ever rectified as the crew seem to be using the spore drive quite frequently now? This is a bit like when it was found that warp drive was damaging subspace so the Federation enacted a starship ‘speed limit’, yet this was soon forgotten about as Starships in proceeding series were pretty much constantly breaking this new speed limit. The Discovery crew do not need tardigrades to fly the ship anymore either, Stammets seems to have been made redundant too as Book now has a way of interfacing and controlling the ship too… maybe any one can pilot the spore drive now, even if it ends up making them trip/hallucinate such as in this episode where Book started to hallucinate about his father. There seems to be quite a lot of negative history between Book and his father, but I don’t think that his dad should have held it against him just for believing that ‘Trans worms’ have spirits. I believe that there is nothing wrong in believing that all forms of life have a ‘spirit’, ‘Trans worms’ included.
It was great to see that Discovery has a bar that looks very much like Quark’s bar on DS9 - it even has a Ferengi bar man, it was definitely a Ferengi male, I can tell the difference just from looking at the lobes and head gear. I’ve probably seen this bar before in previous episodes but it seemed new to me on this viewing.
The episode pace starts to to increase as Discovery enters ‘The Void’. This anomaly is very similar to ‘The Void’ that the USS Voyager passed through in the season 7 episode of the same name, luckily Discovery was not trapped in this void with other predatory aliens this time, so the crew had less to deal with. In a similar fashion to how the Discovery crew was saved in this episode, Voyager also put their crew in to stasis whilst traversing a deadly section of space in the episode One, Discovery put their crew in to a transporter buffer instead of stasis though, same thing pretty much. Perhaps Stammets should have tried to create a Polaron Modulator to escape the void, but perhaps this wasn’t his specialist area of expertise?
Maybe the Discovery crew researched Seven of Nine’s personal logs to find a solution? That lady is LEGENDARY! It’s great that there is a backlog library of franchised episodes to rehash plots from when creativity is possibly compromised or exhausted without the threat of law suits for copyright infringements. Maybe there is a giant set of Star Trek dice on the Paramount lot with plot ideas on each face, these dice can all be rolled simultaneously and the resulting combination of plots that the dice land on ‘face up’ can be combined in order to produce new episodes. Perhaps there is a Star Trek ‘plot generator’ algorithm which Paramount use to reduce writing costs for new episodes? If they do not have one of these I am more than happy to help them design one!
When the crew sent the droid/DOT to investigate the void that they were trapped in, I felt quite emotional as it was broken up by the ‘toxic subspace’… as it disintegrated we heard it’s chilling squeaks and sqweels, like a lobster being boiled alive in a pot as it was ‘eaten up alive’. Quite sad to watch.
Next we hear that the void bubble that Discovery is trapped in is shrinking! This reminded me of the subspace/warp bubble that Wesley Crusher was trapped in during the episode Remember Me. But I totally see that these two things are not the same or connected in any way!
There is some good character interaction between the Trill (I have forgotten this characters name, Adhera?) and Zora, the sentient life form which has made the USS Discovery’s ‘super computer’ it’s home. I felt bad that the Trill had been left out of helping during the ship wide emergency because she is non-commissioned even though she had a lot of experience and knowledge to contribute. Maybe this Trill character will get a commission later on in the season if she proves herself? Perhaps Zora will also want to play more games with the crew if it helps her to evolve and develop focus and further ‘sentience’; It could be Zora’s method of ‘machine learning’. Zora is developing really well as a character so far, I hope that she does not turn evil and betray the crew later in the season.
I do think that the whole DMA story should have been a two part episode or at the very lost a trilogy of episodes… as with all modern serialised Trek it just seems to be a plot point which is being dragged out far more and for far longer than it needs to be. I am glad that we get stand alone episodes back in Strange New World’s! maybe Discovery Season 5 will be standalone episodes for a change too?
We also find out that the DMA (I don’t even remember what DMA stands for to be honest!) is from outside of the galaxy. This has ruined one of my pieces of head canon for the future of Trek.
I wanted the new Enterprise in a 25th century continuation of Star Trek to explore beyond the galactic barrier, being able to breach the barrier without negative effects
I’m guessing that Discovery will this season traverse and explore beyond the galactic barrier. Hopefully this will not drive any of the crew mad and in to ‘god mode’ like it did to @Gary Mitchell .
The solution to the ship and crews exit from the void is a bit of a rehash of old storylines as mentioned earlier, this time they have Michael Burnham piloting the ship whilst her crew are buffered rather than Seven of Nine commanding whilst her crewmates are in stasis. At least we learn that Zora has a fantastic singing voice in the process of this escape. It was a bit of a leap of faith for Burnham to trust Zora with re energising the crew from the transporter buffers, but I kind of trusted Zora too so understand her command decision. No one ever explicitly mentions ‘transporter’ buffers strangely enough in this episode, they only call them ‘computer buffers’ or something like that. Maybe they did not want to confuse the audience with technobabble or be accused of rehashing old storylines? It is curious that the USS Voyager did not make use of transporter buffers to traverse empty or dangerous expanses of space on their journey home from the Delta quadrant. I can think of at least two times that this would have been a really good solution to their problems and expediated their journey. It would have indirectly made the journey home seem a bit quicker too if they were ‘sleeping’ for large chunks of the journey. Perhaps the Voyager Computer core was just not large enough to store the entire crews energy patterns in such a way? Luckily, Discovery has a ‘super computer’ and obviously a really high capacity computer core! Zora is definitely my favourite character in this series so far and I can not wait to to see how the character develops (unless she goes rogue!).
I find that one of Discovery’s problems is that time is often wasted with superfluous and often pointless interactions between crew members which do not add to character development in a natural way, these interactions are often overly theatrical and melodramatic too, as I have previously mentioned. Writing excess emotion in to scenes for the sake of adding drama does not work if there is not an obvious basis for such emotion in the context of the scene, or at the very least a way for the writers to allow the audience to share the emotions in a way that does not seem contrived or patronising.
The final scene of the episode brings everything full circle, Zora creates a family tree. This family tree consists of all of the USS Discovery crew. How beautiful is it that this sentience is now developing a sense of family and connection. Because of my misgivings about this series, I might actually start to view this series and it’s characters through the eyes of Zora… I will hopefully learn to love this crew along with this AI sentience as the character of Zora develops.
After saying that, I have a really bad (but hopefully wrong!) feeling that Zora will go rogue as AI often tend to do in Star Trek. But hopefully this is the blossoming of a new and positively memorable member of the Star Trek: Discovery crew, and my love of Discovery will not be terminated as Michael Burnham presses a big red button to delete Zora just as I am *really* trying to get in to this show!
I rate episode six of Star Trek: Discovery season four, Stormy Weather, 6.5/10.
**EDIT**
Can anyone tell me who the USS Discovery chief engineer is? I’m confused? Stammets?
Which has such a TOS Engine Room feel with the mesh screen on the back wall that I can't blame casual viewers from thinking it's the Discovery Engine Room.
BTW, wouldn’t it have been great if when Zora rematerialised all of the Discovery crew from the ‘pattern buffer’ after the ship had exited the anomaly that they would all have been amalgamated in to one ‘Tuvix’ like character in a transporter accident. Zora could have been left with the moral decision of whether to keep the new life form alive or ‘murder’ them in order to get all of the crew back.
BTW, wouldn’t it have been great if when Zora rematerialised all of the Discovery crew from the ‘pattern buffer’ after the ship had exited the anomaly that they would all have been amalgamated in to one ‘Tuvix’ like character in a transporter accident.
Next we hear that the void bubble that Discovery is trapped in is shrinking! This reminded me of the subspace/warp bubble that Wesley Crusher was trapped in during the episode Remember Me.
Obviously rumors of their disappearance have been greatly exaggerated.
Let us not forget that Sulu was absent from "The Trouble with Tribbles" through "Obsession," six whole episodes of TOS, while George was off with John Wayne, making The Green Berets. Maybe Emily was off with the Olay people, making commercials?
Seriously, another strong episode. Although at the end, I was thinking, "Please make Zora's song 'Stormy Weather,' and not 'Daisy Bell'!" (That might have flown in 2001, but . . .) And of course "Born Free" only works if the AI is named Vanessa, and the ship is a literal garbage scow.
Oh, and can somebody remind me how it is that Book can control a spore drive, even though he's not a space tardigrade, and has no space tardigrade material in his genome?
(how's that for a combination of words that have never been uttered together before?)
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!
