Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x07 - "Erigah"

The tech is unstable. I'm not inclined to let it have the opportunity to kill again. I trust tech less than I trust people using the tech.

 

I'm not exactly sure what protomatter is, but I'm fairly sure that protomatter is exactly the same as building a skyscraper in a swamp.

 

I always thought it odd that David shouldered the sole blame of protomatter in ST3. Either his mom was willingly complicit or she's so stupid that she doesn't even know what substances are used to solve key unfixable elements in her own project (how David justified using protomatter). Either way, doesn't look good for Carol Marcus. Probably runs in the family considering who her dad is (and short of Alexander Marcus having some kind of massive epiphany in the Prime Timeline, 99% chance he's still a jerk like his Kelvin counterpart as the divergence happened while he would've been in adulthood and his personality type more or less already developed)

 

Isn’t the technology they are going after kill someone as well?

 

Yes, part of it rests on Carol and a lot on Marcus. Admiral Marcus might have been a jerk, but I doubt to the degree as in the Kelvin Timeline because part of what drove him as it did was increasing paranoia and fear over a Romulan attack, and ended up almost destroying Earth.

Probably.

 

They've also got the full support of the United Federation of Planets with all the specialists and experts they need to find the clues. Kovich even magically got the name of scientists, without which one of the clues would've been insoluble (so to speak given the clue was water). And, to top it off, they've got a magic ship that can take them anywhere in the galaxy instantly.

Going against them are a petulant teenager and her boyfriend who are on the run from his own people in an ordinary ship. Not much of a matchup! They do at least introduce plot points for Book and the Breen angle.

 

Oddly, I really enjoyed the Whistlespeak episode greatly!! And, I'm in the camp of those who found this one somewhat dull. To each their own!

Here's why this episode didn't grab me.

The plot was riddled with plot contrivances and the dialogue felt stilted and expository, failing to create a believable world. The episode begins with a disappointing offscreen capture of Moll and L'ak by the Federation.

The story is plagued by unreasonable developments: Moll and L'ak are kept together without plausible justification and a series of unlikely events, including L'ak's accidental death and Michael's swift persuasion of Admiral Vance. And a series of forced narrative turns, such as the Primarch being so easily tricked with a flimsy ploy.

The subplot involving a handwritten book in the 32nd century, lacking a digital backup except in a secret mobile base, strains credibility, though a scene with Reno does provide some relief.

In short, the whole story just didn't feel plausible to me and it was forced to go along by author fiat. Just an unsatisfying experience.

The episode ends with little actual change in the overarching story, despite hints at significant developments. Moll ends up on the Primarch's ship with a vague plan to resurrect L'ak using Progenitor technology, but the narrative stakes feel unchanged as Discovery retains most of its key assets and the hunt for the remaining key is set to continue as it was already planned. The overall impact is minimal, leaving you to expect more of the same as the series progresses.

 

I like that maxim! Agree how it works for TOS. And this season of DIS, while I'm enjoying it more than the past several, does have a small universe, stagey feel to it.

 

The tech was unstable in 2285.

By 2381 however they had stabilized it.

I thought that scene was particularly funny given Tilly's out right insane idea that Reno might have a copy, given she had left that business a hundred years before it was even written.

 

Assumption.

We have no idea if actually works.

 

If Planet "Locarno" is still around in the 32nd Century, I'd argue that it works

 

We do not speak of this,

 

To be fair to the Genesis device, the only reason it killed the two people who activated it was because it was not possible for either of them to beam away or start it remotely. (One by choice, the other because he was already spitting his dying breath at Kirk.)

The protomatter is why it was unstable. And the fact it wasn't used on a planet in TWOK... it was detonated on the Reliant. That may have been another factor.

 

You DO know the books will still be there, right? They're not going to suddenly disappear.

 

I have not read all the posts in this thread and i wonder if anyone had noticed that the Breen Imperium has some similarities to the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K. Besides having Imperium in their name, both have an emperor and primarchs. And also the Breen and the Imperium of Man are also openly xenophobic.

 

I can tolerate and head-canon ship fleet sizes, vis a vis Wolf 359 and so on. But it does break credulity when they flat-out made a plot point of Fed HQ being mobile less than ten episodes ago, then just had it sit on its ass in the middle of nowhere and wait to be destroyed.

Never mind how weird it is to leave the HQ out there with no defensive fleet, no nearby planetary defenses, nothing.
If they were going to do that, why not continue to have it hidden?

 

I'd definitely agree when it comes to the tech side of things. The tech serves the need of the plot. Buuuuut, when it comes to characters, their decisions, actions, etc., they should feel natural and, yes, believable.

My biggest complaint about this episode is that it just didn't feel believable from that standpoint. The author imposed plot development and conflict resolution story through arbitrary decisions, without sufficient groundwork in the narrative to make it seem natural or plausible. It felt like a convenient or forced way to move the plot forward or resolve complex issues without properly addressing them through the established logic of the story's world or the characters' development. Events felt contrived, characters acted out of character to serve the needs of the plot rather than following a natural progression.

 

Season 4 Episode 10 of Lower Decks shows us that it works and produces stable planets.

So no, it is not an assumption.

 

Planets plural?

I'd like evidence rather than assuming so.

 

Do you use an app that takes a screencap every so many seconds?

I've been taking what I thought was a lot of Farscape screencaps, mostly just character shots (lots of Aeryn because...Aeryn), but nowhere near that number. When I'm taking them though, I think about your galleries and how it's done on a large scale.

Or a castle in a swamp?