#startrekdis — Public Fediverse posts

I'm re-watching Discovery season 2, and I had forgotten how good it is! All these smart, funny lines between various characters are fun. Pike and Burnham talking about what would count as god. Star Trek so rarely tackles religion as anything other than backwards and primitive, but this episode did a great job. I like that Pike's past knowledge of religion is used as a strength. Burnham is reinstated, everyone is gradually recovering from the trauma Lorca inflicted on them and getting used to having an ethical, reliable captain. Burnham and Saru are starting to repair their friendship, if it was a friendship to start with. And she's dealing with stuff from her childhood. Owosekun, Burnham, and the guy on the planet are the science experts and discuss sciencey stuff together, meaning we have a conversation between three Black scientists. Tilly is fun as she navigates trying to be more of an adult in a work setting. On top of that, episode 1 killed off the obnoxious mansplainy guy in mid-mansplain, bonus! I love this show. #StarTrek #StarTrekDis

I'm re-watching Discovery s2e1: Brother. Star Trek is seriously badly messed up about adoption, and that's on full view in this episode. Just why did Michael wind up wit Sarek and Amanda on Vulcan? There wasn't somewhere less traumatic to put this human kid, like say Earth? Maybe she had a distant relative or close friend of her parents? The same seems to apply to Worf landing with the Rozhenko's, although they seem to have done a fine job for the most part. Amanda, and to a lesser extent Sarek, seem to have done some good parenting too, but there was an obvious less traumatic route to take. Really, they don't have CPS at all in the 24th century? Did anyone pre-screen the Rozhenko's for whether they could keep other kids safe around a traumatized Klingon pre-teen, for example? OK it's fiction, and fiction does this for the sake of interesting plots, I'll stop being bothered by it and move on. #StarTrek #StarTrekDiS

Re-watching The War Without, the War Within. I really like this version of Sarek. "Do not regret loving someone, Michael." And telling her her choices are grace when she says they were mistakes. Someday I need to go back and re-watch all the Sarek episodes in in-universe chronological order. All the lines in this episode from Admiral Cornwell and Sarek to Mirror Georgiou about things the Federation wouldn't do because they're heinously wrong are kind of hard to hear today, the day after my own government did or threatened to do those same heinously wrong things. #StarTrek #StarTrekDIS

I've been re-watching Discovery season 1, and just finished e13 "What's Past is Prologue." What I find hardest to believe about this mirror universe is that they have enough population left after all the killing they do to staff even one starship, or build one. I also find it really hard to believe how many mirror versions of known characters they run into, not just because it seems unlikely that the same parents would have had the same kids, but because it seems unlikely that the same parents would have survived long enough to have kids, or that those kids would have survived long enough to be officers on a starship. That much said, suspension of disbelief kicks in, and I love this episode. I don't normally like mirror universe episodes because people are just so irredeemably nasty, but for some reason I can't pin down, I like mirror universe episodes in Discovery fine. It seems like people are more nasty for an understandable reason, somehow. I love so many things about these couple of episodes, from "Captain Killy" learning to perform power to the sweet scenes between Stamets and Hugh, through that powerful line where Burnham and Mirror Georgiou land on the transporter pad (saving Georgiou's life) and the first words out of Georgiou's mouth are "what have you done to me?!" Little does she know the character growth she's about to embark on. Lorca is also fascinating in this episode. One detail: Commander Landry in the regular universe, under Lorca's command, was one nasty human being, who effectively reveled in committing police brutality. And she was from the "good" universe. Now we see her mirror version, still loyal to Lorca. I think that one minor side character is there to show us that even in a future utopia, there will always be humans who would love to exercise power over others by violence as soon as they're allowed to. Any thoughts on these episodes and characters? Also, I really think 15 episodes/season gave them a better chance to tell a story than 10. #StarTrek #StarTrekDis

I'm re-watching Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad (the one with the gormagander and Mudd). I love this episode. I guess some people think time loop episodes are lazy or budget-saving measures or something, but I just love this one. "There really are so many ways to blow up this ship, it's almost a design flaw"--Mudd. Plus the scenes of Burnham being super-uncomfortable at a party, and Stamets being off-the-wall loopy happy instead of angry and arrogant like he used to be, while Culber trails along babysitting him and wondering what's happened to his partner. Lorca gets more and more complicated. So much good stuff in this episode! #StarTrek #StarTrekDIS

I'm re-watching Discovery, currently on s1e5 Choose Your Pain, where they discover that their spore drive usage is killing the tardigrade creature. I didn't think of it when I first watched this, but the parallels to Voyager's Equinox (s5-6 e26-1) and its Captain Ransom are really jumping out at me. They know they're killing another living being for their super-fast propulsion system. They have an extreme reason to need this faster propulsion. They decide to do it anyway. In Discovery the scientist disobeys orders and takes the extreme step of using himself in an experimental and illegal procedure instead. In Equinox everyone follows orders and kills more and more of the creatures, telling themselves they couldn't help it. But up until there, the two shows are parallel. Ransom is a clear villain though, and Saru is a basically good person struggling to figure out how to be in command despite his own insecurities. One is presented as redeemable and just under too much pressure, the other as irredeemable. But what they're choosing to do is awfully similar. #StarTrek #StarTrekVoy #StarTrekDis