[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Spoilers

Spoiler!

I was kind of enjoying the episode this week, though it was bizarre and over the top, and they have exaggerated the Evil Empire far beyond what it was shown as in previous series. Instead of a Empire, its more like a pirate society, where the purpose of it isn't as much about the application of strength and power that the other Mirror Empires displayed, but Ferengi like profitability.

The premise of going to a planet for a 5% change of saving George, was fine and I'm guessing that the hat wearing paper reading entity is a member of the Q Continuum , I guess.

The idea of Georgiou, changing the future in the mirror universe on the day that she executes her adopted daughter and sets into motion the events of Discovery, so the question is here.

By sparing Michael, does she change the future in both universes. Do the events in the normal and mirror universes shift in a unexpected fashion?

Like I said, I was enjoying the episode until bad actor Michael Burnham made a stunning re-appearance with heavy exaggerated makeup so we'd all know she was eeeevvvvil, she went back into tremendous terrible acting mode, especially on the zoom ins so that she could do such great hits as the psycho smile, the squinty side ways angry glare, and the the I'm so sneaky smug look. Frankly instead of looking evil or powerful, she just looked deranged.

I've gone easy on her acting after the first episode, because she's certainly been a lot better this year because the scripting choices seem easier. But she was so awful and over the top that it was jarring to me.

Meanwhile on the other side, they seem to really want to make Saru just seem like a poor Captain. His interaction with Book was uncomfortable in the face of a valuable volunteer wanting to lash on, and his whole speech with the Admiral about the needs of the many, and the yellow alert, led to the Admiral looking at him like he was a dissapointing son, that would be better off served as a delicious appetizer.

But we did learn that the ship stranded in the nebula where the burn started was Kelpian (sp?) and the Federation rescue ship never arrived. Is this another hint at the origins of the burn or a result of the burn? I don't know.

I kind of figure that this is a two episode arch break from serious work on the Burn, especially with Michael not on the good guy universe Discovery.

This is my first real write up on discovery. A somewhat solid storyline, that makes me wonder if this is Georgiou's exit from the series in the making as she's had a relatively small role this year. Does this have an effect on the time lines of both universes? Why did I cheer when mirror Staments took a knife to the throat? Does everyone in the mirror universe know that they look tremendously guilty and evil all at the same time?

Spoiler!

I don't exactly have a high bar for what I find entertaining TV to begin with, so I think its extra damning when its become obvious to me there is no depth to this story at all. Its all just...stuff that happens, I guess. The overarching plot I thought for this season was to solve the mystery of the burn, yet there hasn't been a lot of that going on at all. Given how many episodes are left in this season we're going to likely have another cliff hanger.

I've come to realize Discovery's biggest problem is that it is not an ensemble show. While Patrick Stewart easily and rightfully got the most screen time and the best stories on TNG, by the time we're as many episodes into that show that Discovery is now we knew so much about all of the bridge crew, whereas outside of Burnham and Gorgiou, and to a minor extent Saru, we know nothing of the others, really.

Because the Captain of the ensemble is not the central thread of its story it removes one of the essential literary ingredients all the other Trek shows had that Discovery has not. The ability to explore the multiple ensemble players character depth through their combined efforts executing the Captain's orders, working together to solve their problems. Because the central character is getting so much screen time we know nothing of the other characters so there is no emotional payoff for conventional literary components. Sacrifice, saying goodbye for the last time, being lost and alone, redemption, and discovery, to name a few just all fall flat. This most recent episode saw Gorgiou return to her own world and start to have a crisis of conscience, which would of been awesome except she's spent the last season acting like an immature and petulant teenager (and its not her fault, I love Michelle Yeoh and she's obviously doing her best with some terrible writing decisions resulting in just terrible, terrible catty dialog) for the last two seasons without really showing any growth, so her redemption arc falls flat before it begins because I just don't care about her. And lets be real, those were some awful Power Rangers style space-pirate armor.

This leads me to my next point. Are they highly organized merciless conquers as the size of their empire would explain? Or are they swashbuckling space pirates that drink and duel and backstab each other? Because, I'd be down with the space pirates; actually it would be so bad ass. But they would not be conquerors. That takes the precision and discipline of something like the Roman Empire, which is not swashbuckling pirates.

I can summarize the entirety of Discovery but lets do the short version and think "do we get one emotional payoff like the other shows managed in abundance?" So far I have:

Season One: get's captain and mentor killed, starts a war, bangs a klingon that looks like a human, nobody on the ship likes each other, stuff stuff stuff, holy crap the mirror universe with the cheesiest worst twist ever, awful costumes, stiff fighting, holy eff what just happened? oh look, saru and crew with the epic flyby, #### blows up, lets go home. epic speech, hey wait? aren't you supposed to be in jail for treason and mutiny?

Oh look, the enterprise!!!

Season Two: brings in three awesome actors that instantly become the focus of the show, and are so good their getting their own fan-demanded show. evil terminator computer is going to end all life in the universe, captain pike does awesome, more awesome captain pike, and spock, and number one, shut up burnham, i miss my mom, stuff stuff stuff, bad ass red iron man suit, lets go to the future. the end.

Season Three: burnham screaming, burnham cheering, burnham crying (a lot), burnham giving a holy speech, burnham being caught guilty in acts and conscience over and over again with a borderline sociopathic ability to suddenly forgive herself for things that are actually pretty awful, mirror universe burnham that is a perverse, joker-like psychopath and the sad realization that this makes way more sense than the "good" burnham, and the whole series should of been in the mirror universe minus the laughable costumes.

In all that I cannot remember one moment that actually had an emotional chord like the heavyweight episodes like "The Inner Light", or when Data's daughter died? The awesome amount of backstory that went into building up the borg and then in First Contact the first time you hear the borg queen speaking then descend from the ceiling and slip into her body (it was 1997 and a massive fx feat at the time)? Discovery suffers from the problem is that this crew has been through so much and seemingly discovered so little about themselves. This show needs to kill off Burnham.