I'm counter, I love the concept of the mirror universe. Not from the standpoint of people are their opposites, but from the standpoint of what is the worst case scenario of all.
That's why it worked with Enterprise and DS9 and TOS. The question is always to me, what's that one event that made humanity into a brutal empire, instead of a Federation. We get hints at it in some of the books, where in one case after the eugenics wars with Khan, when humanity rose up against the Superbeings, that humanity vowed that it would never be conquered again. Or after the nuclear wars, man became determined to spread the race through the galaxy and not be vulnerable.
There was even one book that had the crew of the Enterprise (Picard) do a compatible history and everything was the same except that one lake never formed and things spiraled after that.
The Empire in TOS and even Enterprise had a certain logic to it, strength, conquest and enslavement in the name of humanity never being weak and conquored resonated. In DS9 we saw what happened in that universe when Spock weakened the Empire through reform and the former slave races, the Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans rose up against the empire and instead of fighting a war of liberation or conquest, they fought a war of outright revenge.
When I was watching the Discovery mirror universe it was simplified, they were brutal and cruel in the name of brutality and cruelty. They acted more like pirates then a militaristic empire based around the examples of Rome and Germany and China. I mean they were literally the borg in TNG when ordered was removed from the Hive, they just flew around killing people and doing stuff for no reason.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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After three what I would class as pretty bad episodes, it seems like we've run into what haunted the show last season.
Spoiler!
Last years fairly decent start and interesting premise fell apart on the porch of bad writing, and inconsistent characters.
It seems that this has happened this year as I watched what I would classify as a messy and unsatisfying episode to follow three poorly written episodes.
It appears that the Burn, an interesting premise was cause by a scared child that got upset and yelled, and thanks to living on a dilithium planet with weird radiation that causes a genetic anomaly caused the burn. I mean to me they just made the burn underwhelming and dumb.
Also I would assume that the ending of the season is pretty easy to read, they tame the wild Kelpian and mine the planet.
They had to hammer us over the head with the Tilley is a competant captain because of sarcasm, and that Osyraa is a mean girl with barbed comments who steals the ship out from under Tilly.
I laughed when Michael was talking to Booker about Saru being too emotionally compromised to make the right command decisions. WTF, the last person that should be saying that is her. And it just feels like they're angling towards Captain Michael.
Once again we had to have Michael as the brains of the group when Saru tells her to stay behind, and she disagrees and tells him that he should stay behind because he's the same species as the Burn god, I mean does that really matter. It just makes Saru look even lamer as the Captain.
I was enjoying this season until the episode on Bookers planet (Mess) and then the really poorly done Mirror Universe goodbye Phillipa episode. But this episode was a mess on all levels, and on top of it took the overarching reason for the season, the burn and reduced it to a temper tantrum by a Child.
On a plus note, the effects were nicely done.
Aidra and her force ghost boyfriend are talking again,
Tilly threatening to blow up the ship, really? After all of the crew pumping her up on how she'll be a good captain, I did laugh at that one.
They left the cliffhanger of Book and Michael stuck in the radiation environment, while Saru and the doctor and Aidra are slowly dying of radiation poisoning, and we're one dropped glass away from another burn.
One last thought. the reason why the writing seems so bad is because I think the writers do a lot of meth and need to pack their episode frull of 8 million thinks all moving at breakneck speed, and colliding like a bad Fast and Furious knockoff TV show. This episode was a prime example of that with two major story lines and at least two other story lines all happening at the same time and colliding like drunken pinballs.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 12-24-2020 at 10:01 PM.
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Not really impressed with the Disco season so far, similar complaints with Cap'n.
Another thing after that episode, what is with the new Star Trek writers and tentacles this year? Emerald Chain has them, Pakleds have them, ancient alien AIs have them.
Apparently Starfleet is the only Star Trek universe power that hasn't developed tentacle probing technology lol
I shouldn't be surprised with how lame the burn is, but damn. That's the best they could do? Even having Q being the cause would have been more interesting. The whole episode was a mess. Like, they have extremely limited time, so they jump into the danger zone, and that's when they all have a conversation about what the plan is? Maybe hash that out before jumping in to the deep end?
Did they ever explain why this kid is radiation proof? I may have zoned out.
The combination of dilithium exposed to radiation mutating him I think.
The whole premise of the Burn became so lame in an instant that I literally heard several fuses in my brain explode and I blacked out only to come back and see Tilly literally in a sarcasm war with her enemy.
I mean I would rank that episode in the top 5 worst discovery episodes in the series run, and what makes it worse was this was a key go home to the last part of the season episode.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Yeesh, that was not a good episode. This season started out quite promising, but over the last few episodes it's devolved back into the same crappy writing from seasons 1 and 2.
I guess I'm gonna have to pin my hopes on Picard S2 for some decent live-action Trek for the foreseeable future. S1 may have had its flaws, but it's still a hell of a lot better than what we're currently getting with Discovery.
I also have hope that Strange New Worlds will provide some quality content if it ever starts production.
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It seems like in order to make the cause of the Burn so unpredictable by fans that it was a “I didn’t see that coming!” moment, they unfortunately went too far with it and made it very anti-climactic and silly.
I just know that Saru is going to end up behind to raise and mentor the burn child. Then Michael will take command of the Discovery and be the originator of the Engage line that Picard eventually picks up in salute of the greatest and most all knowing captain in Star Fleet History, Michael Burnham.
Then the last scene in the series will have Discover return to its present time line and James T Kirk will be assigned to the Discovery to be mentored by Tilly and Burnham on how to be a great Captain.
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Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca:
Captain of the Discovery in the first season,[25] a "brilliant military tactician".[26] Isaacs described the character as "probably more f-ked up than any of" the previously seen Star Trek captains.[8] He plays the character with a slight southern U.S. accent, and had initially wanted to ad-lib a catchphrase for the character, feeling that all Star Trek captains should have one, coming up with "git'r done" which the writers turned down due to it being widely used and trademarked by Larry the Cable Guy.[27]
So the only thing stopping the writers from using "git'r done" was a trademark? Well we dodged that bullet. I also see this little anecdote as the source for that stupid scene where Saru(was it Saru?) was trying to find something memorable to say before making jumps.
The worst thing to do with a villain is have him or her go out like a moron. They completely did that to Lorca. It was almost like 3/4 into the first season, they released a patch that killed Lorca's IQ.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I must of been really high because I actually watched this episode, and now reading through this its obvious I have to go back and see it again because I have no idea what any of you are talking about.
I was pretty positive on the first 8 episodes, though the same weak point existed and that Michael. She just is not a good actress, everything with her seems to be forced and exaggerated and while she's a central character I just feel like she's being forced on it to the point that she's difficult to like.
But they had a good story line going. They did try to give other characters a chance to have a story line.
I always have a Detmer watch. I was intrigued by her PTSD type of storyline, but they quickly dropped it.
But the last four episodes they've fallen back into the bad habits of the last few seasons, and I have to rank the last episode as one of the worst episodes in the series. With two episodes left, its tough to recover the interest. I expect that they're going to make the next episode Tilly centric and make her do something to save the ship. Saru will probably end up either heroically dying to prevent another burn, or staying behind to raise the burn baby.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Strange episode, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Was it bad? No, Was it great? No, I think it was just there, with some nice elements, however the biggest problem that plagues this series continued as they just continually cram stuff into an episode until it becomes a maze that easily loses you.
Like I said there were some nice elements.
The Greying of the Federation that made DS9 so good, is being attempted in this episode, in that the Federation was more concerned with its survival then living up to its ideals. That they tried to make Osyraa more understandable and sympathetic in a way. I mean she's a pure capitalist with a ruthless gangster slant. But its understand when you think about the fact that she was raised in a post burn galaxy. I think if they would have spent some time before this developing her character, instead of positioning her as just another bully baddy, this could have worked better and they could have made her into a legit anti-hero, instead of a just another villain.
Once again Burnham shows that when she has a chance to redeem herself over her actions in the Battle of the Binary Star, she absolutely refuses to as her actions with Stamets show. nerve pinching him and sending him into space might make complete sense but she was willing to destroy the man and sacrifice all that matters to him showed that she hasn't changed all that much. Her decision is correct, but once again her judgement is absolute, and that's where the problem with the character is, in that the Burnham method is always right.
Of course they made Tilly the key kog in the breakout, but what's interesting . . . err is they didn't do anything interesting with her or make her brilliant. What they did was take her main nemesis in the pirate Zereh who was cagy and smart the first time around, and made him dumber and more incompetent the second time around, like playing a video game in easy mode.
There was a nice moment as they bought back Kenneth Mitchell to play the Chain Scientist Aurellio. Mitchell had played Klingons in the first two seasons, but last year he was diagnosed with ALS and is now confined to a wheel chair, so I give the casting and producers all kinds of props. But then again Discovery never throws anyone out. However I will be honest, his line delivery and the flashing sign that he's going to be a character going through a change of heart, kind of almost put me to sleep.
Of course in the ultimate cheat the Spore Data know has become rhomba vacuum cleaners and nobody is going to outsmart them. However his just feels like a Mandalorian rip off by making the Sphere adorable huge eyed robots.
Again, it wasn't a bad episode with lots of decent moments in it, but a bumpy ride at times. I will say that this didn't feel like an episode before a season finale episode as the odds are really heavily stacked against the bad guys now and the question isn't whether they take back the discovery, but how bad of a beating the enemy is going to take. The other problem here is that this episode took a major turn and asked some thorny moral questions, however at this point I don't think the show or the writers or the concept are capable of answering those questions in a satisfying way.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 12-31-2020 at 10:41 PM.
1) Aurellio arc is too obvious. Or maybe they includee the dialogue with Stamets as a commentary on disinformation and what is going on with social media (I just watched Social Dilemma so that’s fresh in my mind).
2) I don’t really feel convinced Adm. Vance would dismiss the armistice treaty that easily.
Overall the episode reminded me a little of the Rascals episode of TNG. Also this new trend of just killing off characters is really annoying. I thought Ryn was a good fit for the show.
This weird, but in the Orion make up, Janet Kidder bears a resemblance to a you by Margot Kidder. Maybe its the hair though and not the green skin.
