Star Trek: Discovery 2.02
Jan. 25th, 2019 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Discovery tackles several Star Trek tropes at once.
To wit: Prime Directive, Science vs Religion, A Planet Just Like Earth. Any of these can result in both blunders and actually good episodes, so I was a bit nervous. As it turns out, I liked the result. (Mind you, I can still nitpick – this combination of five different human religions backstory might sound good in theory, but in practice, how did that work? Which dogmas were jettisoned, because some had to be to make said religions compatible, and how did the original believers accept this? Because they had to be pretty central ones. Jesus is either the Messiah and Son of God (Christianity), or the last Prophet before Mohammed (Islam), declared by the Qu’ran explicitly NOT to be the son of God, you can’t have it both ways, to name but two.) It was a good outing for our gang, and a continuation of this season’s apparant mission to individualize and flesh out the bridge crew beyond our main regulars some more.
I also appreciated that Michael, who last season was justly incensed about Tyler not telling her about his terrible mental state until it was too late, wasn’t portrayed as a hypocrite in this regard but by the end of the episode told Pike what she’d seen. It was also worth noting that while she did disagree with Pike re: whether or not they should reveal themselves, she didn’t disobey his orders. Conversely, Pike listened to her arguments and in the end told Jacob, aka the one person who really wanted to know. This strikes civilian me as a good commander-officer relationship. Speaking of Jacob, since I had watched the short webisode about Saru’s origin, I was grumbling what the difference between Saru and Jacob was in terms of a Prime Directive situation. (If you haven’t watched it, basically: Saru comes from a society which hasn’t developed warp drive of its own yet, but he used abandoned tech from space ships to send out a contact request to alien-to-him life, which is how Georgiou found him and took him with her.) But while the episode didn’t point that out since Saru was in another plot line, Pike thankfully came to the conclusion he owed Jacob the truth anyway. Oh, and thanks, show, or not letting our lot just steal the surveillance footage but let Pike ask Jacob for it.
I figured Tilly’s pal Maya (Maeve?) had to be either a hallucination visualizing her inner voice or an avatar of the Red Angel entity, so the reveal at the end was completely unsurprising. (This BSG watcher knows head!people if she sees them.) Since Stamets brought up having seen Culber when he was in the Mycellium network, and having taken this first as the network just using Culber’s image but now having doubts, I assume this is how the show will bring Hugh back. Though given Discovery wasn’t in the network when Hugh was killed, I’m not clear of how that is supposed to work.
Michael's continuing Vulcan family drama: you know, Spock responding to having repeated visions by putting himself into a mental institution for check-up hadn't occured to me, and yet it's actually the logical thing to do if you hail from a culture that prides itself on its rationality.
Lastly: yay for inner Trek continuity and not jettisoning World War III. Yes, events have overtaken etc., but it’s pretty central to the ST timeline.
To wit: Prime Directive, Science vs Religion, A Planet Just Like Earth. Any of these can result in both blunders and actually good episodes, so I was a bit nervous. As it turns out, I liked the result. (Mind you, I can still nitpick – this combination of five different human religions backstory might sound good in theory, but in practice, how did that work? Which dogmas were jettisoned, because some had to be to make said religions compatible, and how did the original believers accept this? Because they had to be pretty central ones. Jesus is either the Messiah and Son of God (Christianity), or the last Prophet before Mohammed (Islam), declared by the Qu’ran explicitly NOT to be the son of God, you can’t have it both ways, to name but two.) It was a good outing for our gang, and a continuation of this season’s apparant mission to individualize and flesh out the bridge crew beyond our main regulars some more.
I also appreciated that Michael, who last season was justly incensed about Tyler not telling her about his terrible mental state until it was too late, wasn’t portrayed as a hypocrite in this regard but by the end of the episode told Pike what she’d seen. It was also worth noting that while she did disagree with Pike re: whether or not they should reveal themselves, she didn’t disobey his orders. Conversely, Pike listened to her arguments and in the end told Jacob, aka the one person who really wanted to know. This strikes civilian me as a good commander-officer relationship. Speaking of Jacob, since I had watched the short webisode about Saru’s origin, I was grumbling what the difference between Saru and Jacob was in terms of a Prime Directive situation. (If you haven’t watched it, basically: Saru comes from a society which hasn’t developed warp drive of its own yet, but he used abandoned tech from space ships to send out a contact request to alien-to-him life, which is how Georgiou found him and took him with her.) But while the episode didn’t point that out since Saru was in another plot line, Pike thankfully came to the conclusion he owed Jacob the truth anyway. Oh, and thanks, show, or not letting our lot just steal the surveillance footage but let Pike ask Jacob for it.
I figured Tilly’s pal Maya (Maeve?) had to be either a hallucination visualizing her inner voice or an avatar of the Red Angel entity, so the reveal at the end was completely unsurprising. (This BSG watcher knows head!people if she sees them.) Since Stamets brought up having seen Culber when he was in the Mycellium network, and having taken this first as the network just using Culber’s image but now having doubts, I assume this is how the show will bring Hugh back. Though given Discovery wasn’t in the network when Hugh was killed, I’m not clear of how that is supposed to work.
Michael's continuing Vulcan family drama: you know, Spock responding to having repeated visions by putting himself into a mental institution for check-up hadn't occured to me, and yet it's actually the logical thing to do if you hail from a culture that prides itself on its rationality.
Lastly: yay for inner Trek continuity and not jettisoning World War III. Yes, events have overtaken etc., but it’s pretty central to the ST timeline.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 09:54 am (UTC)Mind you, it's entirely possible that the context in which we watch the episode makes all the difference. I mean, it took me over a decade to realise that the DS9 episode in which Winn first appears, where she organizes a protest against Keiko teaching about the Prophets as Aliens in the School, was a sci fi take on the US still having trouble with evangelicals vs Darwin. (Then, and today it's climate change deniers and anti-vaccine people, I suppose) The reason why I was missing this context was because arguments about evolution theory in school just didn't happen in Germany of the early 90s. (Now, arguments about cruxifices in school, otoh… But seriously, the most Catholic and the most Protestant of schools would not have had a problem with teaching about Neanderthals. Not least because the actual Neanderthal near Düsseldorf is a tourist attraction today.)
Burnham & Pike: agreed.