[CaptainCrunch]

RE Discovery - First of all, they just recently announced that the show is going on a 6 week I think mid season break, after Thursday's episode there are 4 episodes left to wrap up this story line. So this show was a mid season finale

Spoiler!

When I was younger, I had a friend, his favorite thing was to stomp on the gas pedal, and then without warning slam on the brakes so my head would bounce off of the dashboard, then he'd laugh like a maniac and stomp on the gas again throwing me back in my seat while laughing. Why do I bring this up, because one of the biggest problems with the writers and show runners, is that it feels like they don't understand pacing so viewers get a disjointed experience.

Now this wasn't a great episode, it wasn't a bad episode, but it was an episode light on action, heavy on talk and heavy on revealing as much stuff as they can.

I mean what did we find out in this episode? First of all Zora dreams, she's protective of the crew, and though she figures out where the species behind the DMA lives she doesn't want to give out the coordinates to the crew because its likely they'll be squashed like grapes and the chances of mass casualties is high. Of course the solution to the crews concern of a fully sentient life form type of AI is that Zora creates a kill swith and Stamet basically convinces it that she should be a member of the crew, so then they deactivate the self destruct device and Zora gives the coordinates for the enemy?

Meanwhile the Federation holds a meeting to decide if they should approach the enemy with the hand of friendship and the hammer of war. Of course the vote is for the hand of friendship stuff.

Meanwhile Book who's clearly still angry and grieving gets closer with Tarka who has created a bomb that can destroy the DMA while saving the power supply with the cost of mass casualties with the creator species. Of course Book doesn't care, and Tarka wants to save the powersupply so he can go to an alternate universe ala the villain in Generations (I mean seriously WTF). The technology in the bomb is stolen from a next generation episode where the explosion of this device will also effect warp travel and be a war crime and all that stuff since its banned technology or something like that.

Tarka also creates a easy to use new generation of spore drive for all ships, thus probably invalidating warp drive. He then installs it on Books ship and Book and him go all rogue and stuff to blow up the DMA to the consternation of Michael.

Its funny in this episode as we literally see nothing of the normal bridge crew characters for the second week in a row except for Saru, so we talk about developing characters to make the bridge crew more fully formed, instead they're on a vacation.

Any attempt to develop Grey and Adira just seems to fall flat. It just seems so by the number and is heavy on stereotypes. Also Adira being rude to Zora really seemed out of character and silly.

Like it wasn't all bad, the dialogue for the most part was well written, but for a mid season cliff hanger, there just didn't seem to be a huge sense of urgency. And the idea of Book and Tarka disobeying orders and going to blow stuff up just seems to be rote with very little risk, and because of Super Michael we know they're going to be stopped.

Michael continues to make the president look weak ineffective, it wasn't the president who turned the tide to peace, it was Michael. The Presidents characters seems to be weakly written to push the awesomeness of Michael.

With 4 episodes left in what is a pretty thin premise that seems to be following last years burn storyline, it doesn't feel like a massive departure, or anything new and exciting. The biggest question besides will Book be stopped from his mission of vengeance is who is the mystery species, I mean is it the V'ger machines, the sentient whales from Star Trek 4? Maybe its the Borg or the Klingons who we haven't seen yet, or the creators of Nomad from TOS. Maybe its an insane Q, but I hope not, creating a weapon doesn't seem their style.


Like I said it wasn't great, it wasn't bad, it was just there but it seems like a flop for a surprise mid season finale.