I think the tone has changed as Burnham has evolved. Fully expect it to go dark again as the Lorca story resolves.
Episode 7 was sooo Star Trekky. Loved it.
Interesting and fun episode overall. Pretty much could have been straight out of a TNG season.
Agreed, this was a very Trek episode and I liked it. Serious but charming and a bit fun as well. If they kann polish it a bit and continue to head in this direction this could turn out great. But first we will probably have to deal with more war stuff.
I feel like there’s been a bait and switch. Discovery started off with this dark continuing story arc, where it gained depth as the episodes progressed. It was a welcome respite from the boring star trek recipe book. The suddenly, we have this stock episode which was pretty much the same as every other time loop episode from every other series. It makes me wonder if the guts has been ripped out of this show and we’re just going to get more of the same, but different, from now on.
Nah. Given what Lorca did last week, I’m sure this week was just a breather. Mixing a bit of levity with the darkness is a good balance.
Also we learned that Lorca is collecting various weapons that seem designed to kill people in horrific ways.
So someone saw “Cause and Effect” and decided it needed more teen girl angst. Typical of this show, there was an extreme level of idiot plotting. During a war that threatens the existence of the Federation, Starfleet’s secret weapon has to stop what it’s doing in order to follow the Endangered Species Act. If your writers can’t come up with a better excuse for getting the ship into trouble than that, don’t even bother trying to make a TV show.
I really had expected Mudd to be a good antagonist but they killed him for me in this episode. In both his TOS episodes he was a buffoon who had stumbled across enormous power through dumb luck. In this, he’s a comic book villain with super powers. He’s a frickin’ time traveler now. Who knows what space magic bullshit he’ll come up with next episode? That’s just not interesting to me, no matter what you name the character.
And the ending: In TOS they let him go on the planet of robots to be tormented by Stella because that whole episode was supposed to be silly. In this, they have an extremely dark story where he tortures the crew to death over and over again. Then at the end it’s treated like sending him back to his ex-girlfriend is an appropriate punishment. “Hahaha, women, amirite?” just didn’t make it for me as an ending to this story.
This show has definitely got too many cooks in the kitchen. Lots of producers. Lots of writers. Every time it starts moving in the right direction it gets derailed.
What was with the ending of that latest episode? They pretty much let Mudd go?
Ignoring his dangerous psychopathy, didn’t he still know everything about the ship, and have full details on the secret of the spore drive? Seems a bit foolish. Unless of course the idea is to allow him to return as a regular protagonist.
Well, I mean, it sets up his TOS-era appearances. . .
For ST:D Mudd to turn into TOS Mudd he’s gonna have to spend those intervening years sniffing glue.
Ah right, didn’t realise he was a character that appears in a past future! Well that narrows down what they can do with him death-wise I guess.
But it still doesn’t make any sense. :)
I’d kind of assumed that was going to be the case (or whatever the future past future’s version of that is)
Yeah. . . I honestly liked NuMudd just fine, and enjoyed Rainn Wilson’s interpretation of the character, but he definitely must have fallen off a couple of wagons between DIS and TOS :)
Despite what the producers have said, there is no way this show will lead into the rest of the normal Star Trek timeline without some serious retcons and outright ignoring of inconsistencies. It’s just not possible.
Enterprise stretched that concept pretty badly. Discovery doesn’t even try really.
That is a major problem when you do a prequel to a series from the 60’s There are all sorts of visual continuity issues as well as the story line issues. This is why the change in Klingons did not bother me. Visually, everything has pretty much changed. You can either accept that and watch the show for what it is or not. Unless you allow some slack for the era in and the tech with which TOS was made, you have to accept that it was cheesy and probably 50% crap. For every City of the Edge of Tomorrow, there was a Spock’s Brain to offset it. You can not expect them to be completely true to a series from the 60’s, that would have epic fail written all over it. So far I think they have done a pretty good job with Discovery. Its not perfect but it is worth watching.
Yeah I mean I haven’t seen beyond the pilot yet, but I think expecting this show to totally do a tab A -> slot B with TOS is just going to end in frustration.
There really wasn’t the ratio of good>bad that you see in later Treks, though, @rshetts. When you frame it in the time that it was produced, the ratio of good/bad is much, much higher than TNG, Voy, or Ent. (I mean, yeah, the Frank Gorshin black/white episode seems cheesy and over the top now, but it was risky as hell in the 60s, for instance.)
My main gripe is the Klingon ships The old Klingon design aesthetic was so cool, and it had a very utilitarian feel. Now they’ve gone with this weird ornamental, organic look that totally feels out of place for the Klingons. If only this hadn’t been set prior to TOS, they could have called them the Klarnons (sister race to the Klingons, as the Vulcans are to the Romulans) and all of this would be acceptable. But the only way to do that set in the past would be to end the series with the Klarnons being wiped out, since you’d never see them again.
(Or maybe they stopped shaving their heads, moved to the Delta quadrant, and renamed themselves The Kazon.)
Definitely a ‘very Trek’ episode, and I’m just a sucker for the Groundhog Day premise, but the doinky let’s-hand-him-over-to-his-wife ending feels out of place for this show. First of all, yes, Mudd had intimate knowledge of how this super-secret technology works. It also doesn’t rhyme with the grimdark tone established through the earlier episodes. I’m all for levity–this show certainly needs some–and Rainn Wilson chewing scenery throughout the episode worked for me in that regard. The solution of the plot, however, was just weird and inconsistent.
Watched up to episode 5. Every single character in the show seems to be an idiot. Or a petty idiot. I can’t remember a single non-stupid decision made by anyone.
Does it improve?
Jason Isaacs is doing a good job channeling his inner John Hamm, though.
To be entirely fair, that’s a pretty common theme in Trek series (and others). They’re largely filled with idiots and pettiness. The thing is they’re relatable; we all do stupid things and we all have an inner pettiness which sometimes gets the best of us. But more importantly, the stupidity of others makes it easier for the protagonists to “will” or think their way to victory (cf - crimson force field), reinforcing the superiority of our perspective on things.