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4thofelevenSo, hey, we're halfway through the season, and this week's was a good one, and I'm still interested to see where this is going, so... mission accomplished?
Regarding my concerns from last week:
- Cornwall's alive and kicking ass, so retroactive points for avoiding yet another pointless character death. Loses points for rendering most of Cornwall and L'Rell's scenes last week irrelevant; L'Rell seems to have abandoned her defector plot for no apparent reason, and there's no real reason why Burnham and Tyler couldn't have found the admiral still in her cell, instead of in the corpse-room.... which Kol apparently also uses as a brig and never bothers checking on.
Also disappointed that Cornwall inexplicably takes a shuttle home, instead of warping back with Discovery. Not really a criticism, just having her along for the ride to whatever alt-universe they're in would have been fun, and I'd rather see another confrontation between her and Lorca sooner rather than later.
- Saru and the Pahvans never really get mentioned. For the most part, that's good – as I said last week, Saru's actions really aren't the sort of thing the character can easily recover from, so maybe it's best if it all gets swept down the memory hole. As for the Pahvans – well, they don't end up playing the Organian role. In fact, they don't play any role. “Si Vic Pacem...” is looking more and more like the most skipable episode of the season. The idea of a third party trying to mediate peace isn't ever mentioned here – which, again, might be for the best given the show's general attitude towards mediation, but makes one wonder why it was even raised in the first place.
So, what do we get? We get a pretty decent episode, with our first real look at Lorca as a proper heroic captain. He's got his quirks, of course – no previous Trek captain would be praising his crew for becoming 'hardened warriors' – but when push comes to shove, he's unflinching in his determination to stop the Klingons from targeting innocents, even when those innocents have caused problems for his crew. It is, I imagine, our best look at what Lorca was like before the loss of the Buran, and does a lot to ease away a lot of the grimness that surrounded the show's early episodes.
In many ways, this actually feels like a bit of a new start, even before Discovery gets hurled into another universe. A lot of old plot threads seem to be being wrapped up – I wasn't expecting to see Kol and the Ship of the Dead go down so early in the season – and we finally get Klingons speaking English after half a season of halting gibberish! Certainly a relief, and the universal translator fig-leaf is obviously just an excuse to dump the Klingon dialogue; it very quickly switches from the translator voice providing translation after the line to Kol just speaking English outright. A lot of the darkness and cryptic hints of the early episodes seem to have fallen away over the season; it's starting to feel like a proper crew now. I suppose retrieving Georgiou's insignia is symbolic of that; she's been a bit of a spectre over the show for some time now, with the Shenzhou a reminder of what a Starfleet crew should be, and now Discovery's found its feet, she can finally be laid to rest.
A little disappointed that Burnham doesn't show any signs of PTSD herself when she returns to the Klingon ship; her whole story in the pilot was about losing control around Klingons, and this is the first time she's been face to face with them again, but she kept her cool a little too easily this time around.
On that subject, Tyler. Nice to see confirmation he's not as collected as he's appeared previously, and still has a lot of issues to work through that he's been burying. I was also pretty impressed with how they handled the aftermath of a male character being raped alongside the obvious torture and trauma and survivor's guilt he's carrying around. Of course, I am attaching an asterisk to that praise, as this could very easily become a real mess depending on where the character goes; it's entirely possible, if fan theories are correct, that his memories are inaccurate and he's actually remembering completely consensual sex between L'Rell and Vox... which is something the writers are going to have to be very careful about how they handle. But at the moment, I like the way his scenes are being written.
Oh, and Stamets being one jump away from retirement? Not a lot to say, really. Oh, except him in the spore chamber and Culber telling him “I love you” through the glass – that was an intentional Wrath of Khan reference, right?
So, the big question: Where are we now, and how long before Discovery makes it home? The show's generally been pretty good about not dragging out any single plotline too long, so I suspect we won't spend the entire rest of the season in whatever reality Discovery's in now, but maybe we'll see more than one before the ship makes it home. I do hope this means we'll have the chance to see some dead characters come back; an alt-Georgiou or Landry would be fun, or even an alt-T'Kuvma or Kol.
Regarding my concerns from last week:
- Cornwall's alive and kicking ass, so retroactive points for avoiding yet another pointless character death. Loses points for rendering most of Cornwall and L'Rell's scenes last week irrelevant; L'Rell seems to have abandoned her defector plot for no apparent reason, and there's no real reason why Burnham and Tyler couldn't have found the admiral still in her cell, instead of in the corpse-room.... which Kol apparently also uses as a brig and never bothers checking on.
Also disappointed that Cornwall inexplicably takes a shuttle home, instead of warping back with Discovery. Not really a criticism, just having her along for the ride to whatever alt-universe they're in would have been fun, and I'd rather see another confrontation between her and Lorca sooner rather than later.
- Saru and the Pahvans never really get mentioned. For the most part, that's good – as I said last week, Saru's actions really aren't the sort of thing the character can easily recover from, so maybe it's best if it all gets swept down the memory hole. As for the Pahvans – well, they don't end up playing the Organian role. In fact, they don't play any role. “Si Vic Pacem...” is looking more and more like the most skipable episode of the season. The idea of a third party trying to mediate peace isn't ever mentioned here – which, again, might be for the best given the show's general attitude towards mediation, but makes one wonder why it was even raised in the first place.
So, what do we get? We get a pretty decent episode, with our first real look at Lorca as a proper heroic captain. He's got his quirks, of course – no previous Trek captain would be praising his crew for becoming 'hardened warriors' – but when push comes to shove, he's unflinching in his determination to stop the Klingons from targeting innocents, even when those innocents have caused problems for his crew. It is, I imagine, our best look at what Lorca was like before the loss of the Buran, and does a lot to ease away a lot of the grimness that surrounded the show's early episodes.
In many ways, this actually feels like a bit of a new start, even before Discovery gets hurled into another universe. A lot of old plot threads seem to be being wrapped up – I wasn't expecting to see Kol and the Ship of the Dead go down so early in the season – and we finally get Klingons speaking English after half a season of halting gibberish! Certainly a relief, and the universal translator fig-leaf is obviously just an excuse to dump the Klingon dialogue; it very quickly switches from the translator voice providing translation after the line to Kol just speaking English outright. A lot of the darkness and cryptic hints of the early episodes seem to have fallen away over the season; it's starting to feel like a proper crew now. I suppose retrieving Georgiou's insignia is symbolic of that; she's been a bit of a spectre over the show for some time now, with the Shenzhou a reminder of what a Starfleet crew should be, and now Discovery's found its feet, she can finally be laid to rest.
A little disappointed that Burnham doesn't show any signs of PTSD herself when she returns to the Klingon ship; her whole story in the pilot was about losing control around Klingons, and this is the first time she's been face to face with them again, but she kept her cool a little too easily this time around.
On that subject, Tyler. Nice to see confirmation he's not as collected as he's appeared previously, and still has a lot of issues to work through that he's been burying. I was also pretty impressed with how they handled the aftermath of a male character being raped alongside the obvious torture and trauma and survivor's guilt he's carrying around. Of course, I am attaching an asterisk to that praise, as this could very easily become a real mess depending on where the character goes; it's entirely possible, if fan theories are correct, that his memories are inaccurate and he's actually remembering completely consensual sex between L'Rell and Vox... which is something the writers are going to have to be very careful about how they handle. But at the moment, I like the way his scenes are being written.
Oh, and Stamets being one jump away from retirement? Not a lot to say, really. Oh, except him in the spore chamber and Culber telling him “I love you” through the glass – that was an intentional Wrath of Khan reference, right?
So, the big question: Where are we now, and how long before Discovery makes it home? The show's generally been pretty good about not dragging out any single plotline too long, so I suspect we won't spend the entire rest of the season in whatever reality Discovery's in now, but maybe we'll see more than one before the ship makes it home. I do hope this means we'll have the chance to see some dead characters come back; an alt-Georgiou or Landry would be fun, or even an alt-T'Kuvma or Kol.
no subject
on 2017-11-16 06:40 am (UTC)Female character death, that is, and yes.
That one made more sense to me, although a super-spy should be smarter than L'Rell here: Based on her hand-wringing and desperation, I genuinely think she was too startled at "Ash Tyler"'s sight and what it meant, namely that he had been accepted into the Discovery crew at a level she had never imagined.
Okay, you got me there. THIS WAS SO WACK!
Yes, good call. This was by no means a simple mission. Though I don't think he's afraid to die -- just to fail and lose his ship and command (we know losing his crew is not among these items). Taking chances, even if they involve him, has always seemed a Lorca thing to me, if perhaps a more old!Lorca thing.
I'm still torn about whether he is Mirrorverse!Lorca or not. On the one hand, the cataclysm surrounding the Buran could have switched the Lorcas, and there are factual hints about how different he is: His collection of oddities in the "basement", the strange scar on his back that Cornwell doesn't recognize, his eyesight that previously seems to have been fine.
Agreed, and really loving that. I don't mind Lorca being shady; I want a sense of Us, though.
I think so, yes!
C'mon, the writers can't squander that opportunity, can they..? Ultimately, by season's end, I think we will be home, but not long before.
no subject
on 2017-11-16 06:59 am (UTC)Hmm – maybe he's had a similar experience to Stamets, and has similar cross-time/cross-reality visions?