Star Trek: Discovery 2.01
Jan. 18th, 2019 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIt's so good to have a Star Trek show to look forward to again, I can't tell you. And Netflix put the four shorties online yesterday for us overseas fans who couldn't watch them before, so I felt all caught up when starting the new season today.
There are a few scenes/lines that felt there as a Doylist way of reassuring the audience and/or deliver exposition, like the bridge crew all giving their full names (since you could be forgiven if you watched s1 and had no idea what they were called, other than Lorca, Saru and Michael herself), or Pike telling Michael it'll be also some fun on the way, but other than those sledgehammery things, I thought this was was a neat season opener, establishing continuity to the last season while also setting new perimeters.
Our s1 gang: Sylvia Tilly, how I love you, let me count the ways. Adored both her scenes with Stamets and her scene with Michael in med lab, both of them such utter geeks about getting those asteroid samples. This infectious joy in geekery-plus-exploration is such a Trekian thing, and whenever an ST show ignores it for too long, it loses something essential.
The Tilly-Stamets scenes as well as Paul Stamet's earlier watching of Hugh Culber's recording also addressing an s1 complaint I'd seen, to wit, that between his coma and then the need to save the universe, Stamets didn't have time to actually mourn. This he does now, and it's not surprising that he wants to transfer. Since I've seen the s2 trailer, I guess he won't because plot interferes, but like I said: it makes sense he wants to. (More when we get to one of the new characters.)
The opening flashback to child!Michael being brought to Vulcan and his family by Sarek, her first encounters with Amanda and Spock, as well as the conversation between present day Michael and Sarek before he takes off fills us in some more into the fascinating mess that is Trek's most famous Vulcan/Human family. Previously, it was anyone's guess what kind of relationship Michael and Spock had. That they - like Spock and Sarek at this point in canon - haven't talked for years sets up a new mystery. I mean, we know why Spock and Sarek didn't, but whatever caused the silence between Michael and Sarek can't have been child!Spock's initial resentment at the new person getting his parents' attention. If the relationship had not moved on from this start I doubt Michael would care so much now. And it can't have been her mutiny, otherwise it wouldn't have been "years". True, the episode also establishes the Enterprise was in deep space on its five years mission more recently, but given Michael's question to Pike, I doubt that was the reason, either. It occurs to me that Michael's reaction when Spock turned down the Vulcan Academy - where she wanted to go but couldn't - might have been less than "serves them right"? Anyway, we'll find out. I'm all for exploring complicated sibling relationships.
On to the new people: obviously Pike. My take on previous incarnations of Pike is that I can take or leave original TOS!Pike but loved Bruce Greenwood's Pike, who was probably my favourite of the Reboot Trek characters. This one isn't off to a bad start. They don't overdo it with the "we missed the war" angst, just indicate it's there after establishing him as a focused on the here and now good commander, trying to set the crew at ease after what they've been through, someone who tries to keep the balance between approachability and, well, commanding, and make sure that he doesn't take main narrative focus off Michael. (I can see what the actor meant when he said he wasn't there to play the lead but to support the lead.) Both the scene where he steps back after his immediate mission is over to let Saru take over again, and his later remark about "joint custody" feel as much reassurance to the audience as to Saru and Michael, because, well, on a Doylist level there is no reason why Saru couldn't have remained Captain (which he essentially was in the second half of last season) other than the need to play into Trek nostalgia.
That of the two (new to Trek) people Pike brought on board with him, the fast talking flyboy ends up as the episode's redshirt while the quiet female officer survives feels like a meta commentary as well. The episode's major new character other than Pike, though, to me was the genius female engineer of the crashed Hiawatha. I'm assuming she'll stay on board, whether or not Stamets transfers, because his specialty is Mycellium, and they can't use the spore drive in the near future, while Tilly is on the command track and too young to be chief engineer besides. Cranky engineering genius between 40 and 50 able to work miraclesin a cave on an asteroid isn't a new trope in Trek, but this person being female is, and the actress sold the deadpan in the middle of chaos beautifully. I absolutely want to keep her.
Lastly: Spock's log entry at the end revealing that when child!Spock was drawing holograms of a monster which child!Michael saw as a rebuff, he actually was trying to deal with his nightmares as Amanda had advised is a neat narrative layer of the "reality experienced differently by two different people" type, and offered a visual connection between past and present as Michael used that memory to bring the hidden message to light. On the flip side, let me just say: him actually leaving an explanatory message of sorts is more than he does on other occasions. I mean, this is the guy who doesn't tell Kirk Sarek and Amanda are his parents until they're standing in the same room, doesn't mention the cult leader hijacking the Enterprise is his half brother until he's forced to, doesn't mention he's got a a biological condition approaching until he's already in the middle of pon farr and even decades later takes off to Romulus to start an underground peace and reunification movement without bothering to tell anyone anything.
Son of lastly: am amused that one message of Lorca's Chinese cookies has survived Kat torching the lot the last time she was on Discovery. And of course it's "not every cage is a prison". I see what you did there, writers.
There are a few scenes/lines that felt there as a Doylist way of reassuring the audience and/or deliver exposition, like the bridge crew all giving their full names (since you could be forgiven if you watched s1 and had no idea what they were called, other than Lorca, Saru and Michael herself), or Pike telling Michael it'll be also some fun on the way, but other than those sledgehammery things, I thought this was was a neat season opener, establishing continuity to the last season while also setting new perimeters.
Our s1 gang: Sylvia Tilly, how I love you, let me count the ways. Adored both her scenes with Stamets and her scene with Michael in med lab, both of them such utter geeks about getting those asteroid samples. This infectious joy in geekery-plus-exploration is such a Trekian thing, and whenever an ST show ignores it for too long, it loses something essential.
The Tilly-Stamets scenes as well as Paul Stamet's earlier watching of Hugh Culber's recording also addressing an s1 complaint I'd seen, to wit, that between his coma and then the need to save the universe, Stamets didn't have time to actually mourn. This he does now, and it's not surprising that he wants to transfer. Since I've seen the s2 trailer, I guess he won't because plot interferes, but like I said: it makes sense he wants to. (More when we get to one of the new characters.)
The opening flashback to child!Michael being brought to Vulcan and his family by Sarek, her first encounters with Amanda and Spock, as well as the conversation between present day Michael and Sarek before he takes off fills us in some more into the fascinating mess that is Trek's most famous Vulcan/Human family. Previously, it was anyone's guess what kind of relationship Michael and Spock had. That they - like Spock and Sarek at this point in canon - haven't talked for years sets up a new mystery. I mean, we know why Spock and Sarek didn't, but whatever caused the silence between Michael and Sarek can't have been child!Spock's initial resentment at the new person getting his parents' attention. If the relationship had not moved on from this start I doubt Michael would care so much now. And it can't have been her mutiny, otherwise it wouldn't have been "years". True, the episode also establishes the Enterprise was in deep space on its five years mission more recently, but given Michael's question to Pike, I doubt that was the reason, either. It occurs to me that Michael's reaction when Spock turned down the Vulcan Academy - where she wanted to go but couldn't - might have been less than "serves them right"? Anyway, we'll find out. I'm all for exploring complicated sibling relationships.
On to the new people: obviously Pike. My take on previous incarnations of Pike is that I can take or leave original TOS!Pike but loved Bruce Greenwood's Pike, who was probably my favourite of the Reboot Trek characters. This one isn't off to a bad start. They don't overdo it with the "we missed the war" angst, just indicate it's there after establishing him as a focused on the here and now good commander, trying to set the crew at ease after what they've been through, someone who tries to keep the balance between approachability and, well, commanding, and make sure that he doesn't take main narrative focus off Michael. (I can see what the actor meant when he said he wasn't there to play the lead but to support the lead.) Both the scene where he steps back after his immediate mission is over to let Saru take over again, and his later remark about "joint custody" feel as much reassurance to the audience as to Saru and Michael, because, well, on a Doylist level there is no reason why Saru couldn't have remained Captain (which he essentially was in the second half of last season) other than the need to play into Trek nostalgia.
That of the two (new to Trek) people Pike brought on board with him, the fast talking flyboy ends up as the episode's redshirt while the quiet female officer survives feels like a meta commentary as well. The episode's major new character other than Pike, though, to me was the genius female engineer of the crashed Hiawatha. I'm assuming she'll stay on board, whether or not Stamets transfers, because his specialty is Mycellium, and they can't use the spore drive in the near future, while Tilly is on the command track and too young to be chief engineer besides. Cranky engineering genius between 40 and 50 able to work miracles
Lastly: Spock's log entry at the end revealing that when child!Spock was drawing holograms of a monster which child!Michael saw as a rebuff, he actually was trying to deal with his nightmares as Amanda had advised is a neat narrative layer of the "reality experienced differently by two different people" type, and offered a visual connection between past and present as Michael used that memory to bring the hidden message to light. On the flip side, let me just say: him actually leaving an explanatory message of sorts is more than he does on other occasions. I mean, this is the guy who doesn't tell Kirk Sarek and Amanda are his parents until they're standing in the same room, doesn't mention the cult leader hijacking the Enterprise is his half brother until he's forced to, doesn't mention he's got a a biological condition approaching until he's already in the middle of pon farr and even decades later takes off to Romulus to start an underground peace and reunification movement without bothering to tell anyone anything.
Son of lastly: am amused that one message of Lorca's Chinese cookies has survived Kat torching the lot the last time she was on Discovery. And of course it's "not every cage is a prison". I see what you did there, writers.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 07:49 pm (UTC)Cranky female chief engineer yes please! I'm hoping she joins the background ensemble.
....LOL I had not realized Spock was quite that dramatastic in his failures to communicate. Oh, Spock.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 10:28 am (UTC)I liked the little touches like the comment about uniforms (though I actually prefer the Disco ones) and the Geordie visor, but apparently I missed a lot more. But then I haven't seen TOS for many years.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 11:57 pm (UTC)I can see what the actor meant when he said he wasn't there to play the lead but to support the lead.
That's a pretty cool thing for any actor to say. Probably why I like this guy. :)
That of the two (new to Trek) people Pike brought on board with him, the fast talking flyboy ends up as the episode's redshirt while the quiet female officer survives feels like a meta commentary as well.
The writers hang a lampshade on this when Pike tells female officer to "trade in your red shirt for a flight suit." It's a deliberate misdirect, and it made me smile.
Cranky engineering genius between 40 and 50 able to work miracles
in a caveon an asteroid isn't a new trope in Trek, but this person being female is, and the actress sold the deadpan in the middle of chaos beautifully. I absolutely want to keep her.ME TOO. So much!
I love your outline of just how BAD Spock is at communicating. It's something I was always aware of but I've never seen it summarized as neatly as this.
So happy show is back!