Star Trek: Discovery 2.06

[selenak]

In which the most insane plan since Archer thought evolution was destiny is executed on a Star Trek show.



Seriously, as the kids say today, what even? Mind you, ideologically, this is the opposite of what Archer did in s2 of Enterprise, when he and Phlox decided that if they helped one of the two sentient species on a planet medically to survive, the other would never develop into who they were meant to be, therefore, any medical help for species A was improper. But it‘s no less bonkers. Not that I‘m okay with one species hoodwinking another into being killed off at an relatively early age, but what team Discovery did here was basically putting gasoline into fire, especially since they couldn‘t count on the angel ex machina appearing. They could have triggered genocide, not to mention suicides on a massive scale since the Kelpians had to assume they were going insane, and they did so without having the slightest precautionary measures in place of how to help the traumatized population in the best case scenario where both Kelpians and Ba‘ul don‘t kill/harm each other immediately. It‘s as spectacularly irresponsible as - oh, I don‘t know, Dubya invading Iraq without any kind of plan for how to keep it stable post Hussein? Brexit? Just -WHAT EVEN?

Show, I love you, but that was one seriously dumb episode. Well, every ST has (more than) one, so I guess this is your first.

Other than that, well, liked the Michael-Saru bond as always, liked that Culber isn‘t just fine and dandy after being ressurected - early on I thought we were heading towards parallels between him and Saru, asking themselves who they are now, especially since since Culber essentially has a brand new body he‘s primed for an existential crisis along the notes of „am I even original Hugh Culber or just a copy?“ -, not because I want him to be miserable but because I want emotional continuity. Speaking of, the scene between Pike and Tyler at the end was the first since the season opener where Pike‘s not so secretly feeling guilty about not having fought in the Klingon war comes up again, or rather, is the subtext of that conversation as Tyler lands a psychological punch while alluding to it. Which isn‘t very sympathetic but is the kind of character stuff I much prefer to bonkers plans. Oh, and I‘m somewhat relieved Saru detected a humanoid wearing a suit in the Red Angel, because that strikes a direly needed morally ambiguous note in all the „saviour“ talk. I‘m currently liking Pike more than Tyler, but in this I have to say he has the better argument, not least because I‘m a Babylon 5 fan and I tell you, that‘s a Vorlon!

In conclusion: what even?

Comments

[andraste]

Given the change in showrunners, I sort of wonder if there was originally something else planned and the new Powers That Be just wanted to get the Kelpian/Ba'ul question out of the way as quickly as possible.

Given how Saru was behaving, I cannot imagine why everyone thinks it's such a great idea to just unleash thousands (hundreds of thousands???) of justifiably furious Kelpians with apparently no plan for dealing with the potential fallout other than 'Surana will tell them to be nice.'

[reverancepavane]

Actually I think it did capture a lot of modern American liberal moral philosophy quite well. Non-interference is a fine concept, but when your silence allows the Bad Guys to get away with abuse then you are actively assisting them in their actions. Note the use of a lot of very inflammatory keywords - slavery keywords, refugee, racial segregation, primitives living in harmony and peace versus warlike dictators who use terror.

[And of course their the Good Guys so there is no way their good intentioned intervention could possibly go wrong... =9) ]

Although I'd say General Order One wouldn't apply in this situation because the Ba'hul have exposed the Kelpians to high tech and therefore altered their development. Knowing the rest of the universe exists would not create damaging cultural shock. Or at least no more than they already suffer.

Instead it's a diplomatic argument really. Do we want to be friends with the Ba'hu and interfere in their internal dynamics. [So yes, your post-Hussein analogy is very inept. And didn't the Ba'hul did emerge from a pool of oil... =9) ]

And yes, something quite different from the ideals of TOS.

[jesuswasbatman]

Sounds like they were influenced by the Whedon tendency to "kill/expose all the bad people and assume someone else will sort it all out". Which looks much worse now than it did in the early 2000s.

[jainas]

There is *so many* ways it could go wrong, I can't even figure how they thought it would be a good idea. Not even going into the social and cultural upheaval they unleashed on the planet, or indeed the very real risk of mass suicides, what about the physiological impacts of a change that they said themselves they didn't understand? Did babies went through Va'harai? Teenagers?
Honestly it strikes me as such an obviously flawed plan that I'd like to see the show acknowledge it in later episodes.

I also was a bit disappointed with the design of females kelpians, it would have been neat if they'd had the same angular sharpness than the males, instead of the unimaginative "softer, rounder, with lips fuller and more red" design the show went for.

Also, I had moments in this episode when I shouted at the TV for the director to drop the damn camera and stop making endless spiralling sequence shots around the characters for no reason. ^^
Clearly the weakest episode so far.

[lizbee]

It's interesting you compare it to that episode, because I watched that one last year and was deeply puzzled to find it's widely praised and considered actually good. And I sort of have the same reaction to this one -- I enjoyed it a lot, and I think you could argue that Saru's solution was a justifiable gamble under the circumstances, but it's not as cut and dried heroic as a lot of people seem to think.

One of the writers has a background in anthropology, which I think really helped the worldbuilding, but I'd be eager to buy her a drink and find out more about the thinking behind the ending. Or maybe that's a storyline which will be revisited in the future.

(That's Bo Yeon Kim, who also drew on her family's experience under the Japanese occupation of Korea. I think it's notable that this wasn't written from a strictly American or even Anglophone perspective, though I'm still unpacking how.)

[labingi]

"It‘s as spectacularly irresponsible as - oh, I don‘t know, Dubya invading Iraq without any kind of plan for how to keep it stable post Hussein? Brexit? Just -WHAT EVEN?"

You sum up why I found this episode mildly offensive--and I mean those words very carefully, genuinely offensive, albeit rather mildly (because it was trying to say some nice things about working things out and no one being just fully evil). It's still a stunning example of an ideology that caused incalculable harm in the world put forward with the unexamined self-congratulation the typifies American culture at its very worst. I want better from my Star Trek, certainly in 2019.

On another note, my partner and I both independently came to the same conclusion mid-episode that the reveal was going to be that the Kelpians and Ba'ul were the same species (before and after the transformation). I think that tracked better with the slightly ominous bellicosity we got from Saru in the beginning, and frankly I think it would have been a much more interesting plotline.

[labingi]

Can you give an example of what you're referring to here (and why it looks worse now than in the early 2000s)? (I've never heard this particular critique before.)

[saturnofthemoon]

Looks like I need to track down that episode of Enterprise, because some things have to be seen to be believed...

[4thofeleven]

I ended up way more sympathetic to the Ba'ul than I think I was meant to. They were nearly wiped out by the ancient Kelpians, and once they got the upper hand, they responded, not in kind, but by trying to create a stable balance that would allow both species to survive and prosper.

Sure, they're murdering the Kelpians, but the Kelpians seem to be living full lives before the culling - Saru and Surana were adults when their father died, after all.

It's a weirdly humane solution to "You're sharing a planet with violent predators who tried to kill you all once", and I kind of respect them for that. I wish we'd gotten more of their perspective.

[jesuswasbatman]

It's something I've been thinking for a while and haven't properly posted about because the shows are so old, but all three of the Whedon TV shows I've seen ended with the heroes responding to large-scale injustice with "burn it all down and someone else will sort it out". Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Buffy empowering all potential Slayers worldwide, which was seen as entirely a good thing, after the old Watchers' Council had been massacred earlier in the final season, which had also been seen as probably a good thing (things didn't turn out so well in the post-series comics, but in a way that for me suggested that the writers had a different view of what the issues were than I had). Angel ended with the characters massacring the Black Thorn who they'd been told were responsible for most of the evil in the world (which is so out of synch with the show's established morals that my headcanon is that the Black Thorn were just a pretentious demon drinking club and Angel and friends fell for the Senior Partners' plan to neutralise them). And the Firefly film ended with the characters just releasing the details of the Miranda scandal into the public domain with no real idea of whether it would actually improve things or what to do afterwards.

And all of these seem very similar to me to various dotcom ideas that were promoted as ways to help the "little guys" help themselves but turned out rather the opposite. AirBNB - promoted as a way for ordinary people to make some extra money and increase efficiency in property use, turned out to be a way for people with capital to get into the holiday rental business on a big scale while evading planning regulations, consumer protection, and taxation. Uber - promoted as a way for ordinary people to make some extra money, turned out to be a way to replace traditionally highly-trained and fairly well-paid working class jobs with untrained, exploited, desperate people on minimum wage, and obstruct and undercut useful public transportation. Wikileaks - promoted as a way for the "little guys" to safely expose wrongdoing, turned out to be a way for the Russian secret service to help a fascist who's probably in their pocket get elected US president.

[selenak]

Me neither. And even if it‘s a case of „we inherited this plot line we don‘t like“ - this is just a bad idea on so many levels.

[selenak]

I don‘t think „keep silent and ignore the Ba‘ul are oppressing and gaslighting the Kelpians“ and „trigger traumatic biological change without any assistance measures in place, let alone any measures to prevent either Kelpians or Ba‘ul to go on a slaughter rampage afterwards“ were the only two alternatives here. For starters, Discovery should have asked for assistance. (Preferably ask for a lot of doctors and therapists as well as legal negotiators, along with military backup.) The Ba‘uls technological standard meant the Prime Directive no longer applied. Information campaigns, offers to play third party negotiators between Kelpians and Ba‘ul, help so the Kelpians going through their change would not do so alone and convinced they were either going insane or that they would die - all of this. But not „go in, smash up, go out“ and never mind what happens next.

[selenak]

No kidding. I mean, if this was the finale of an unexpectedly cancelled show and they needed to wrap up Saru‘s story, then I might understand something of the thought process, but it‘s not. So I guess I have to write it off as Spock‘s Brain kind of dumb.

[selenak]

Future revisiting might salvage some of this for me, but I still would have the problem that there‘s no way Pike & Co. should have accepted Saru‘s plan instead of coming up with alternatives.

That‘s interesting about one of the writers. But a story should make sense on its own merits, and this one just doesn‘t, to me.

Re: the Enterprise episode, while watching, I was entertained, but I also thought „is this supposed to be the ENT version of a DS9 moral dilemma episode? Because yeah, no“. Though I wasn‘t offended the way I was by The Congenitor. Now that one really made me furious.

[selenak]

Oh, as soon as Saru said no one had ever seen a Ba‘ul I was dead certain the reveal was that they‘re later stages Kelpians, and some of my bafflement was that this wasn‘t the case. Otoh, maybe that had at first been planned and then someone said „but Star Trek: Prime Directive“ already has a „they‘re the same species“ reveal? Or maybe the change in writers is the cause. Either way: worst episode so far.

[selenak]

It‘s this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Doctor

[selenak]

Well, so far we didn‘t get any of their perspective, just guess work re: their motivations on the part of everyone else. I also hope that black oil creature isn‘t supposed to be what the Ba‘ul look like in their natural state, because that would be a lazy entry into the „the bad species is the dark colored, ugly one“ annals. (Not to mention that the last sentient oil slick was the one which got Tasha Yar...)

[vilakins]

The best thing about that ep was that the Kelpians were the predators of the Ba'ul which I hadn't seen coming. Yes, way to unleash chaos in a society...

I'm with jainas on the look of female Kelpians. It would have been cool if his sister was even thinner and more angular than Saru.

Also with jainas on the camera-work - distracting angles, lots of low shots of characters, and STOP WITH THE BLOODY LENS-FLARES ALREADY! It got so both of us were yelling at the screen. I've done rants in the past about camera-work and lens-flares putting up barriers in front of the viewer (at least there were no shaky hand-held shots) and not letting us forget we're watching something filmed instead of just being able to immerse ourselves in the show. Just give us the characters and story, not your failed ideas of being artistic.

[labingi]

Sorry for a delayed reply and thanks for these examples. Boy, I hardly remember the Angel stuff at all. Good points. I'll give Firefly a bit of a pass because it got cancelled before its time. :)

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Also, I had moments in this episode when I shouted at the TV for the director to drop the damn camera and stop making endless spiralling sequence shots around the characters for no reason.

THIS. It was so excessive it undercut some genuinely effective character moments with the announcement of Serious Drama! (The swelling music didn't help.)

Otoh, the lighting of the final Pike/Tyler scene was gorgeous and worked with the strength of the scene, perhaps because the writing had more quiet strength.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I have, very belatedly, resumed my access to this show, and it gives me joy to see that you have intelligence things to say about even the things you watch quickly. This was an episode I so wanted to enjoy: it focuses largely on the Michael/Saru friendship! Sirana's first encounter with Michael is so affecting! But the sheer dumbness really got in the way.

And it was tied to a denigration of Sirana's perspective that disturbed me. Her role is to be the adoring woman who doesn't get the male hero but then realizes he's right and all her previous notions must be thrown out to support him. Whereas I thought she had some good points: Saru might be right about the Ba'ul's exploitation, but leaving his family to expect retribution and never sending a message to say he was safe was needlessly cruel, and ignored emotional fallout in ways the larger "let's-blast-the-planet-without-emotional-preparation" story replicated. Also, while I'm open to the character evolving, I couldn't help but notice that Saru became a very macho figure in this episode, both in his treatment of Siranna and his success through brute strength.

It was also odd that after setting up the parallel with Saru, Culber was abruptly dropped for the rest of the episode. Maybe they thought it too awkward to remind the audience that a sudden non-consensual physical transformation is traumatic?

Finally, given this is a time-travel story I think the only question now is which character we know is wearing the Red Angel suit.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

This is something that would never have occurred to me, but really convincing, so I must thank you very much for stimulating thoughts in unexpected ways.

I knew exactly what you meant when you said it—it's that "Whoever is in authority is bad! But I'm totally uninterested in exploring what it would take to create a better system" that shows up in a lot of pop culture, especially from the US--but the examples are good ones. (I feel like there are several others in early Buffy, maybe involving the Initiative?) There's a libertarian bent to it (not surprising, given that Firefly has an explicit libertarian and pro-Confederate agenda.) And the real-life political implications are terrifying and have pretty much come to pass.

But 90% of the time you can some up this total disinterest in communal structures, realistic emotional fallout, and complexity in favor of an individualistic and destructive hero's narrative as machismo. Which even Buffy isn't free of.

[selenak]

Ah yes, I'd almost forgotten how much I disliked that episode because of the dumbness. I liked the entire season, except for this one and the finale, though with the finale my problems were different ones than here.

Re: Culber, though, I suspect it was more a matter of available screen time, because his issues are touched upon again (if I recall correctly) in the very next episode, and in subsequent ones.

re: Saru never sending a message, though, I don't know whether you've watched the "Short Trek" episode (Disco did four of those between seasons 1 and 2) which deals with Saru's backstory and introduces Sirenna. At the end, then Lieutenant Georgiou tells Saru he'll have to say goodbye to his family for good if he goes with her, because technically this situation still falls under the Prime Directive. I.e. the not keeping in contact wasn't Saru's choice.

Incidentally, someone pointed out to me that if MirrorSaru was also the first Kelpien to make contact with a human, or rather a Terran, he in the Mirrorverse was the one who inadvertendly condemned his entire race to slavery and cannibalization by the Terrans, and it would just have been like MirrorGeorgiou to keep him personally alive to watch....