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Star Trek Discovery Discussion: Saints of Imperfection
139 Plays2 years ago
Here is our discussion for Season 2 episode 5 of Star Trek Discovery! We would love to hear what you think! GUESTS: Sean: http://www.youtube.com/trekonthetube Fatheree: http://www.tex-trek.com PJ at Boatrek: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEwVNHJnfU45szq04jicCcw
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Transcript
Welcome and Episode Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
We're back on another exciting episode of Starfleet Boy, where we have a casual and informal conversation about Star Trek.
Focus on 'Saints of Imperfection'
00:00:08
Speaker
And we're talking about Star Trek Discovery season two, episode five, Saints of Imperfection. And I'm joined by another summit today, which is awesome.
Guest Introductions
00:00:26
Speaker
So PJ on the left from PJ's channel. Hello.
00:00:31
Speaker
And New Finland. How's the weather? Are you with the polo? It's cold here, so. Yeah. Nice. And then we have Sean from Trek on the Tube, our regular helmsman through these journeys. Hello. Hello there, good sir.
Tig Notaro's Character Discussion
00:00:53
Speaker
Welcome back. And we have Father E from Text Trek. Hello. Sup. Sup, you're what's up.
00:01:03
Speaker
If he's the helmsman, what am I? Can I be like the Tig Notaro guest star that just shows up sporadically? I love Tig Notaro guest star, so yes, you can totally be Tig Notaro. But she surprisingly disappears in this episode, even though the last one ended with her standing right next to Stamets in the cocoon. And then by the time Burnham ran in there, Tig Notaro, Tig Notaro is gone. She's just like, it's time for me to clock out. I'm not working overtime. Y'all can handle this.
Introduction of 'Nitpick Corner'
00:01:31
Speaker
I got shit to do, y'all.
00:01:33
Speaker
That does sound like something should. There's literally no one around a cocoon. There's a big problem. There should be science offices and medical offices. There should be everyone around this cocoon. Why is STEM? It's the only guy there. I mean, I don't I think we're kind of just being nitpicky. I don't know the actual time frame. It does seem like much more empty than it should be.
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, they do have a lot of science officers. Linus, he's got a silver shirt on. He could be down there, sciences. We're going to have a special segment on today's episode called the nitpick corner.
Episode Summary and Key Plot Points
00:02:07
Speaker
And we're going to just go let loose on the corner. But before we get to that, we got to do the episode summary. And Sean, I think you have to adjust your sound. I do. My sound is not good. You're on shit sound. Wait a minute.
00:02:23
Speaker
There you go. Is this bitter? Yeah, but he has two sounds. One is shit and the other one's a good sound. I'm sorry. I apologize. I apologize for being on shit sounds. I don't know why you have to. Does anyone want to do the episode summary?
00:02:44
Speaker
Today? No? Yes? Yes? No? Maybe so? I mean... I can do it if you want. Yes! Do it, Sean. Go for it. If you really want this. Yes.
00:02:56
Speaker
Okay, so the episode picks up, I'm assuming moments after the last one left off, because we have a slow-mo montage of Burnham running from the bridge to the science, the sport app, yeah. She was doing her best Tom Cruise. That's a good form, pockets, chin. Yep.
00:03:17
Speaker
I think it's because the uniforms are a little awkward. I saw in the behind the scenes that they had to literally attach the top of the uniform to the pants. So maybe when they run, they detach or something. So anyway, good running. So the episode picks up where Burnham is running to the science, the Spore Lab to
00:03:38
Speaker
to figure out what's going on with Tilly. And it turns out Tilly has been kind of sucked into a cocoon that's brought her to the upside down from Stranger Things. So she's in the Marcela network. It's like the upside down because it's neon. It's all neon and
00:03:59
Speaker
It's it's it's the it's the upside down pretty much but a little down by way later on. It's cyberpunk upside down. Because I'm gay. Can I call it gay upside down? Is that okay? Is that all right? Whatever you want. You're allowed to call it whatever you want. It's the mycelium network. I call it. I call it the pride upside down. The upside pride.
00:04:28
Speaker
Anyway, so the whole deal of the episode is they have to try and find Tilly. They have to try and get her back.
Spock's Shuttle and Section 31
00:04:37
Speaker
And so that's the A plot. We also have a bit of a subplot where they finally find Spock's shuttle. So they're tracking Spock's shuttle. They try and follow him. He's being defensive or aggressive. I don't know. It depends on how you look at it. Turns out it's not Spock. It's actually Emperor slash Captain Georgiou working for Section 31. And so she's on board and she brings Tyler on board.
00:05:04
Speaker
And then so the episode goes into the main plot, which is saving Tilly.
Mycelial Network and Culber's Return
00:05:11
Speaker
They do a semi-spore jump, find themselves half locked into the MySeala network and half in prime timeline, like real space, right? The prime timeline.
00:05:27
Speaker
Well, I don't know timelines and realities are kind of a mixed thing in Star Trek I mean out of normal space is what they call it Yeah But then you see something like the the whatever realm where the species 8 4 7 2 comes in I don't know is that is that a
00:05:48
Speaker
So that's like subspace or whatever it is. Does that count as like prime timeline? Does the Calvin timeline have their own version of that? Or does that then crossover both into the prime timeline and the Calvin timeline and the very universe? Then we get into the timeline.
00:06:04
Speaker
The timelines just for us, it's like, it doesn't matter on Star Trek. Like no one really knows where they, like they don't, they just know they're in their correct universe, but we call it some timeline for like story reference. You get the conversation of.
00:06:22
Speaker
Well, you have alternate timelines, but you also have alternate universes. So are those the same thing or are they different? Yeah, well, I think it's just a different denomination, whatever. Anyway, we find ourselves half in the micellar network, half in normal space, right? And so a couple of crew members, so Burnham, Stamets, go looking for Tilly.
00:06:49
Speaker
And so they find Tilly. And surprise, surprise, we also find, like, Culber. And then so the whole episode deals with bringing back Culber from Mycelial Network, bringing back Tilly from Mycelial Network. And we have this kind of subplot about Section 31 being involved with the chase of Spock, which is currently accused of killing three people.
Marketing Critique and Spoilers
00:07:16
Speaker
And there you go.
00:07:20
Speaker
That's, that's my summary. Are you, are you unhappy with my summary? There is also a section 31 ship. They're doing some, doing some stuff. Yeah. The section 31 ship helps them. Like it helps them remove themselves from the, from the my ceiling network. They send them three tractor beams, which seem like a transition between the, the, the hooks and a real tractor beam. Can we talk more like a tow truck service? Wait, what's that PJ?
00:07:48
Speaker
Can we talk about the opening scene after Burton's monologue and then chasing the shuttle and how stupid that is? What? Tell us what was stupid about that. For one thing, if you saw the trailers, you knew it was coming. It wasn't a surprise that it wasn't Spock. Why can their sensors detect certain things sometimes and then they can't detect that it's not a half human, half Vulcan on the shuttle?
00:08:20
Speaker
But what was the sense of the surprise? The surprise was completely spoiled by the marketing. I didn't watch the trailer, so I didn't know. Oh, really? The discovery has a huge problem. I don't think we meant for any of it to be a surprise, because we also surprised by Dr. Culver. Dr. Culver was going to come back for this season as well, like we just didn't know how. It's a huge issue, right? What's that?
00:08:46
Speaker
I was surprised that they were bringing them back. I didn't think they were going to do that until like the very end, but I liked the way they did that. They said that in season one, episode one. They said they would kill him, but then bring him back. They marketed the entire series on that. They have this huge problem where they create all this drama. They overdrama everything on the bridge and everything, but they've already told us that they're going to kill Cole, but bring him back. And that reinforces his relationship with Stamets.
00:09:10
Speaker
So why all of this suspense?
Audience Reactions to Discovery
00:09:13
Speaker
Culber's death was actually a shock to me. I guess I missed all of it. The way they killed him was shocking because I didn't expect him to be snapped by Vox slash Tyler. But we all knew he was going to die.
00:09:27
Speaker
And we also knew he was going to bring him back because that was part of the struggle and the depth of his relationship and what reinforces his whole love story with them. Like they told us this when the season began. I didn't know that either. Immediately after he died, they spoiled his return. Like that night on after track. He's going to come back.
00:09:48
Speaker
They're very worried. They said that they were going to kill him. Right. And then they killed him. But then they get backlash from the LGBT community. So like, don't worry, we're going to bring him back. We're not killing off the gay character. Anyway, it's kind of weird. They have these problems with marketing. And as you say, the same thing with Emperor Georgiou. It's like kind of like we know that. Well, I when I first saw this, while you're doing the drama. When I first saw this episode on
00:10:17
Speaker
air night, I was like super, super into and thrilled by the opening sequence because I did actually think Spock was in the shuttle. Like I know that they didn't like, you know, like I, I thought it was cool that, and then when Pike pulls that maneuver with like exploding the torpedo, all of that was just hella dark red, I thought. Cause it was just like so well executed. Like Pike's just like, oh, he's trying to go into the fucking nebula. No.
00:10:53
Speaker
I lost. We lost our people here. I don't know. I felt like I lost our people here. He went into the Nebula. Oh, God damn. We've lost the host people. Yeah, it reminded me of that one. He's back. Back from the Nebula. We lost you. All three of us lost you for a minute. Oh, you did? I was just talking to myself. Yes, you were.
00:11:19
Speaker
You went into the nebula. Well, I said something really cool and exciting, which was that I was excited by that scene. And I want to see, like, Spock, Pike, Alla, Hunt for Red October actual, like, you know, chess game of wits, you know, between the two of them and see what happens. It would be pretty cool. The Spock storyline has just been a tease, and that's OK so far. But in the first episode,
00:11:48
Speaker
Michael is expecting to see Spock. She doesn't see him. That's fine. But then they do it again where she thinks she's going to meet Seric, but it's really Amanda.
00:11:59
Speaker
And they have all these excuses for why they can identify who's on the ship at certain times, just so they can have that surprise.
Section 31 and Character Analysis
00:12:07
Speaker
And then they did the same thing with Giorgio. They say Spock like four or five times. So I think it's, Spock that. And it's like, no, I know it's not Spock. PJ, PJ, is it fair to say that the show has been Spock teasing us?
00:12:25
Speaker
Yes, that is true. To be fair, I think that when you have certain minor-level greens up, you actually can't detect who's on board a craft. For example, when you go to maybe yellow alert, I don't know the specifics.
00:12:49
Speaker
We lost him again, didn't we? Gone again, oh my god. This is terrible. Without having shields up, without, you know, not knowing who's on board the shuttle, you know what I mean? Like, I think there is an explanation.
00:13:06
Speaker
It almost seems dependent on like whether they want to surprise us with another trick like in the next episode is this Spock or and then it's not him again. That doesn't bother me. I don't mind them drawing it out. I would kind of like Spock just to be at the towards like the very end of the season. I don't care about waiting for Spock like he can show up in episode eight or nine for all I care.
00:13:30
Speaker
I just don't like them trying to like trick us and like, oh, we gotcha. Oh, we gotcha. Oh, it's not spot up. Oh, it's not Eric. It's like, okay.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think their expectation is that people are going to be way more excited to see Spock than I think a lot of us actually are. I know I'm over myself. I've seen Spock so much in all of Star Trek. I'm over him. Yeah. I want to see more of these characters. Right. I want to see more. I want to see more of number one and the tenant none. Right. That that that Barzan. There's no interaction between those two at all.
00:14:10
Speaker
No. She's wearing a scant, right? Yeah. Yes. So that's cool. But then other than that. Was it called a scant? Was it called a scant, the original series or was it a skirt? It was called a skirt. Although I think that's technically a dress or a dress. Yeah, she's wearing like an original series style dress, I think it is. But then she's got
00:14:38
Speaker
She is less revealing in it. It's not like she has pants on under it. It's more it's more appropriate. I mean, like those original series uniforms were ridiculously short, like, like no official organization, whatever that if a woman, if a woman in the 24 23rd century wants to wear a really short skirt around the TOS times, like maybe it'll be more progressive that way. But now in this time right now, it seems like they're very formal.
00:15:08
Speaker
Even the TOS style uniforms are more military. I mean, Dax very much enjoyed wearing that dress when she went back in time. Jellico was sexually uncomfortable around Troy because of what she was wearing. And Troy didn't see anything wrong with that, you know what I mean?
00:15:29
Speaker
Nichelle Nichols said about playing Yuhura in the 60s. She said that a lot of the women actresses on the show felt that being able to like wear something like that was empowering. And at the time it wasn't really viewed as a problem because it was like women taking ownership of their sexuality.
00:15:49
Speaker
which, you know, in the 60s was a very different conversation than what we have now. But it's true. Men can wear skirts too, like men wear skirts. Yes. That's part of the Star Trek canon, that men can wear skirts also. Well, then they're called Skants.
Culber's Arc and Visual Critiques
00:16:08
Speaker
So that's when we have the Skant. I see. So that's like,
00:16:13
Speaker
I guess it might be the unisex version of a skirt or something like that. But have you ever seen, have you guys been to conventions? Have you ever seen anyone cawing in a scan? Because I see pictures of it all the time. I think it's popular. I have a friend of mine from Quebec that him and two of his mates, they went to Star Trek Las Vegas and they almost cancelled all three of them. Oh, wow. One of each division, right? So he got them custom made and all. It was real good.
00:16:41
Speaker
So I'm gonna go to Star Trek Las Vegas this year. Who's gonna come with me and wear a scant? Oh dear lord no.
00:16:48
Speaker
I might wear a Utila kilt. I don't know if I'll wear it. Utila kilt. Have you ever heard of those? Anyway, and that's our ship for Utila kilt. Everyone go out and get one. In your summary, you didn't mention top vogue part of section 31. I don't find it worthy of being mentioned.
00:17:16
Speaker
at this point okay maybe maybe it'll turn into something interesting at this point it's just useless i just feel like they have this guy signed on for like seven seasons and now they just don't know what to do with them right it's like damn it we need to keep this guy on the show what are we gonna do because they already got rid of his wife they got rid of his kid they got rid of everything it's like i don't know
00:17:36
Speaker
The only interesting thing he has is his comb edge, because it shows us that the TNG-style comb edges, or the comb edges that arrive later on with the communicators, originated from section 31. They're really confused, Pike, too. He was like, what the hell kind of communicator is that? We have that Bluetooth technology now. He's all mad, because he's like, can't you use a screen like everyone else? It definitely makes sense. I want to talk to people online.
00:18:04
Speaker
I'm not a big fan of how they're going to backtrack on their advancements in technology, which is something that didn't bother me in the first place, like holograms and stuff. And now they're like, we got to rip them out and just have a balance. Use some hologram stuff, use some screen stuff. Just balance it out. You don't have to. This juxtaposition of really outdated tech like the communicators that open and the holograms, which is amazing. Yeah, find a milligram.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, but there's no middle ground. They just do two extremes and it's dumb. I look at it as this, like the Star Trek, the original series that we all saw is almost entirely from the perspective of the crew of the Enterprise. And so it makes sense that there are no holograms like that little line from Mike explaining.
Narrative Choices and Character Development
00:18:55
Speaker
that little line explains the typical holograms. And if we're gonna call bullshit then, and a lot of people consider, or I guess it is considered official, the animated series has that room with a holodeck that's, or someone's like,
00:19:13
Speaker
you know powering in the one scene so I do think that it's like just like today in I guess just like in real life like this in the FBI may have access to technologies that like that are a little bit more advanced than what maybe the military is using or what and so it's like one can imagine that like
00:19:35
Speaker
you know, the discovery being is so having this experimental spore drive technology has like the state of the art latest and greatest mental stuff. Whereas the, you know, the enterprise later is actually retrofitted. You know, it's interesting to imagine that like, through discovery, we're going to actually see the enterprise transform the enterprise that we know and love. I'm curious how they're going to do it is obviously it doesn't look anything like it at the moment.
00:20:04
Speaker
And we've only seen Spock's quarters on the inside. That being said, I also had to reconcile. I had a huge problem. I hate prequels, first of all. I had a problem that the show set where it is because all of these things wouldn't matter if the show were set just, you know, past. Gee, you know, like, it would have been
00:20:26
Speaker
totally fine, but I do have to say that I find it less of a problem this season because the performances, the stories, the visual effects are just better. Somehow it's making it less important to me that all these incongruities are there. It definitely is more fun and has more sense of joy and humor. It's lighter and it's bouncier and all this.
00:20:56
Speaker
It is what it is, it's... That kind of brings up something that I wanted to talk to you all about and that is the reaction to Star Trek Discovery is overwhelmingly positive with the more like mainstream TV community. And a lot of the criticisms are coming from the Star Trek fandom side of things.
00:21:22
Speaker
And I've been very positive on the show overall. I think I like it more than a lot of old-school Star Trek fans. I do have my problems with it. But it kind of surprises me that
00:21:39
Speaker
a lot of the TV critics really love it so much. Like I have a friend here where I live in Austin who reviews television. And he told me the other day that it is one of his favorite TV shows on the air right now.
00:21:57
Speaker
So I think he wants that fan. But I'm just, it just kind of surprises me that Star Trek Discovery has done such a good job at catering to the modern TV audience. Yeah. It just has to be better constructed, better. Well, you know, it's, there are so many, like in this episode, can we get back into like some of the things in this episode? Like for example, you know, Georgia and,
00:22:28
Speaker
her inconsistency, I find. And I'm not really too fond of Michelle Yeoh's acting. And I hate to be a nitpicking little bastard and like criticize shit, but she's there eating an apple and like it's so cliche, cinema sins would have had a field day with her.
00:22:43
Speaker
It's like... Well, CinemaSins isn't very intelligent criticism. We didn't go Star X much time. CinemaSins is deliberate nitpicking. I mean, it's nothing personal against movies. There's also CinemaWens now, where they say everything good in the movie. Oh my God, anyway. To build off what you were saying, if you check out the IMDB top 10 list of best current ongoing shows, Discovery's in there.
00:23:09
Speaker
Discovery is huge with the mainstream audience, which is something that, I mean, I suppose we should all be happy about as Trekkies, because it means that's what's getting Star Trek to expand, right? If Discovery hadn't been such a mainstream success, then we wouldn't have had all these other spin-off shows. And I kind of feel like Discovery wasn't made for us.
00:23:29
Speaker
in the first place it was made to be the mainstream show and now that it's successful we might get these niche shows like The Return of Picard we might get a limited run on Wrath of Khan and those are the kind of like limited series that will be for us because I mean now we're talking about two animated shows one which is a more adult Lower Decks which is more adult and then there's gonna be like a full-blown kids show that's gonna be out on Nickelodeon
00:23:57
Speaker
And in two months, there's going to be an animated short trick. Yeah, and then we're getting animated short tricks. I think that's like to kind of show us that they can do animation. I think that'll be the first MacMahon project just to show us what he's trying to do. I know he's working on solar opposites at the moment, but...
00:24:17
Speaker
I think there's a specific group of fans that we tend to gravitate towards and that's fans that have pretty much seen everything and have read technical manuals and have books and are super deep into Star Trek, but I don't think that's the majority of the audience
00:24:42
Speaker
even of old Star Trek like even William Shatner like even William Shatner you know makes fun of the 80s on SNL he did this skit where they were at a Star Trek convention and he like tells Star Trek fans to get a life basically and so I think like he pretty much told me that one time in person
00:25:08
Speaker
That's amazing. Can I tell my Shatner story? One of my Shatner stories. Shatner story. I want to tell this one real quick. It was at a con where he was doing a Q&A panel with Scott Bakula. It was so weird because Scott was getting so many more questions than Shatner.
00:25:27
Speaker
And there was a lot of Quantum Leap fans asking him about, like, oh, the last episode of Quantum Leap, and will we ever see Sam again? And just all this Quantum Leap questions.
Star Trek Actor Interactions
00:25:38
Speaker
And you can tell that Shatner is kind of in a bad mood because he wasn't getting any attention. And so I just, I'm like, well, I feel bad for him. Someone asked him a question. And so I asked him, I said,
00:25:50
Speaker
I thought it was cool when Kirk became Admiral Kirk and then they turned him back into captain, but I thought Admiral was a lot cooler. Do you wish that you could have stayed in Admiral or did you like being the captain? And he said to me, he says, well, I didn't really care because I understood it was all make believe and wasn't real.
00:26:09
Speaker
Oh, god damn. Shatner strikes again. You got shat upon. Wow, that's a good story. I'm sorry. That's that's actually worse than Gary's Brent Spiner Twitter.
00:26:36
Speaker
incident what happened what happened there i i just remember after something by brent spiner made some kind of snarky comment or something like that i don't remember the specific gary trigger price has these um data files character data files right oh that's right he breaks down the characters and so he broke down data
00:26:58
Speaker
And he sent it to Brent Spiner on Twitter thinking maybe he'll watch it. And so apparently Brent did. And he said that he had like this backhanded compliment. We said like the video is great, but maybe you should try and breathe a bit. Because Gary speaks very quickly and he's all very enthusiastic in his videos. And so Gary didn't really know how to take that. And then he had a complex about talking fast after the. Oh no.
00:27:27
Speaker
If you watch his data files in order, you get to the data one, he's speaking pretty quick, and then you get to the next one, he's all calm and collected. Maybe he's just giving him some helpful advice. I think it was. I think it was. I really dive into Culber and what PJ brought up, which I'll let him talk about.
00:27:50
Speaker
in the nitpick of the episode. But before we, I definitely want to talk about, but I have a question for you guys, which I just forgot.
Enterprise and Discovery Connections
00:28:01
Speaker
Great. Oh, what did you guys think of what?
00:28:12
Speaker
What? You're like, who's Leland? Leland, the section 31 cap. You cut out. We didn't hear you. Oh, sorry. OK, OK. Yeah, you're transmitting from the nebula today. You're all cutting out. I'm fully in the nebula. You are stuffy, boy. You're cutting in and out. Yeah, I'm fully in the nebula. But that's why we do a separate audio recording, because it actually. We're going to blast your ass with torpedoes and then tractor beam you back. Certainly. Cut that out.
00:28:45
Speaker
But yeah, Leland, like... I'm trying to think. What do we think of Leland? I'll just go ahead and go first, but I really did not like the way that Section 31 was used in this episode of Discovery because it contradicts so much of what we saw in DS9 and Enterprise. However, after I re-watched the episode a couple of times, I got over that a little bit and I did kind of like
00:29:11
Speaker
the character Leland in Section 31 more than I thought I would. They're not as evil as I've always kind of pictured Section 31. And he was kind of, you know, helpful. He saved the discovery. Of course, Giorgio had a role to play in that. But I like the chemistry between Helm and Pike. I love Pike's reaction to Section 31.
00:29:33
Speaker
how he had no respect for Tyler being forced on his bridge, how he was so skeptical of everything 31 was doing, how him and Leyland have like this backstory. And the way that they were used for dramatic purposes was very effective. Just to me, it's not as cool as the more secretive and mysterious section 31 that we've gotten previously.
00:30:00
Speaker
I have a question about Section 31, right? Sure. Okay, so in Deep Space Nine, they're like a secret organization that no one really knows about, right? They're in the shadows. You kind of don't really know about them. Sometimes they approach offices and try to get agents.
00:30:17
Speaker
And in enterprise, it's the same thing. And so kind of the quarrel here is that in discovery, they are kind of just the covert ops, right? Everyone knows about them. It's just that they're kind of in the gray area. The organization's title, as I'm reading from memory alpha, came from the original Starfleet charter, Article 14, Section 31. How the hell does Section 31 exist in enterprise? There's no Starfleet charter yet.
00:30:45
Speaker
Well, there is a Starfleet before the Federation, that's the Earth Starfleet. But it's like the Earth fleet, and it's not Starfleet yet. They call it Starfleet. Do they? Yeah, Archer says that he's a captain in Starfleet. That was one of the things that bothered me back in 2001 when Enterprise premiered, and I was being nitpicky about it, like how we're doing Discovery now. Okay, so it is a possible thing. They did exist. I was all the way.
00:31:16
Speaker
hmm I was also I was super against enterprise I actually didn't watch I was like I was like one of those people but it got so good in season four and then they canceled it yeah season four the best season of enterprise anyway so it does
00:31:35
Speaker
Can you show off your badge, your section 31 back on the subject that you're wearing? You can't see it because it's black on a black shirt. This is a black shirt that has Ripper the tardy great on it. Ripper is my spirit animal. That's amazing.
00:31:58
Speaker
But I actually really liked the scene, to me, rewatching it. I liked it between Pike and Leland because you can see that they were kind of AR friends or they've known each other for a long time. How did you think of Admiral Cornwall coming back in this episode? There's so much stuff happening in this episode. It's crazy. Just like when they rescue Tilly and then there's still like 20 minutes of episode left. It's nuts.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah. P.J., did you have anything about Leyland and Cornwell and Section 31? I like Leyland and I don't like the way Georgiou treats him. It's like she's threatening to expose his background to win a little fight. And I really don't like Georgiou.
00:32:49
Speaker
I think it's an inconsistent character. I mean, she's hitting, she's eating in the apple. She's hissing at Michael, kind of making threats against insinuating threats against Spock. And then at the end of the episode, she's all like, you got to trust me. And of course, Michael's not going to trust her. Of course, she can't be trusted. I think it's going to be like this predictable thing where she could trust them. Our natural real bad guy who they have to kill and stop at the end.
00:33:14
Speaker
Well, she's going to have the Section 31 show, so I don't think they're going to kill her on Discovery. I know they're going to try. I mean, she's going to get away. Maybe Section 31 could be about her.
Speculation on Future Story Arcs
00:33:25
Speaker
running from being hunted by Section 31. Leland is like Tommy Lee Jones and she's like Harrison Ford, you know what I mean? I love it. I would like her to kill Leland. I would like her to take control of Section 31. She kills Leland and that's why Section 31 goes all like off the chains and that's why it goes kind of secret. That could work.
00:33:46
Speaker
Or if like she releases a virus that goes and like attacks every Federation computer and erases any record of Section 31. And every... Yeah, because Cisco in DS9 was like, I've never heard of Section 31. How can this be real? There's no record of this. Yeah, they're gonna resolve that, I think, yeah. They're gonna make it so that something happens that's so bad that it is wiped out somehow, whichever way they do it.
00:34:14
Speaker
I also think that they're almost setting up, I think that they're almost setting up stuff for Georgia too, though, for Empress Georgiou. I think it's important to call her that, because we love Georgiou, I think, unanimously, like the actual Captain Georgiou who was like in Discovery for like two minutes. But Empress Georgiou, like in that scene where Tyler is holding his baby, there's that moment where she kind of like lets,
00:34:41
Speaker
and shows a little emotion and then here she does the same thing again when they rescue the discovery when like everything you know she almost has this uh i don't know if you notice it but like first of all she buys them like three three minutes three more minutes but the actual scenes are like 20 minutes and and like they're
00:35:01
Speaker
But anyway, she buys them three more minutes. And then at the end, when they like actually are successful, she has like a relief. Like her her expression is that of relief. I know you said that you don't particularly are not particularly fond of Michelle acting. I'm the total opposite. I've been a big fan of hers. It's crouching tiger. She delivers some lines like in the elevator when she's coming on a bike and she's talking in the elevator.
00:35:30
Speaker
It's like very well done. And then when she gets these long lines, it just doesn't sound right. She can't pull it off. It's the role that doesn't suit her. She was great as Captain Drojo. There's no question. Yes, because that like Michelle Yeoh is that kind of character. She's powerful. She's strong. She's confident. And so as this kind of like very good, honorable and decorated captain, it works. But then as this kind of
00:35:58
Speaker
scheming villainous, um, Emperor. It doesn't work. It doesn't, she's not good. She's not wearing a mustache. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a shame that they didn't see that. It's a shame. I love all that. I think that we could have had, I think, the cat and Georgia show, but the Emperor George should have been killed off.
Character Dynamics and Themes
00:36:17
Speaker
I think because we're having this action to the Empress, we are, or the Emperor, I think she's doing a good job. I think that she's meant to be a character that you don't like. And so I think the reaction to it is maybe, like, appropriate. It's not the character that I like, it's a relatable thing. Yeah, that's the problem. No, I'm saying like... Jumping Game of Thrones is a testable character, but the performance is amazing.
00:36:43
Speaker
This is different. She's not suited for the role. Well, the role is not suited for her. She's an amazing actor, but in this specific instance, it's not working for me. But she can do all the cool action fights. She can do that. That works. Her acting doesn't bother me, but I do hear a lot of people have the same criticism that y'all are having. So I understand I'm kind of the odd man out on that.
00:37:09
Speaker
I was in the Nebula. I missed all that. Can you give me a quick recap? I was in the Nebula. God, stay out of the goddamn Nebula. I can't help it. I don't know what's going on here. Long story short, both of them hate
00:37:31
Speaker
Michelle is acting as Evil Giorgio. I think it's okay, but a lot of other people have that opinion, but she does really cool fight scenes, so that's kind of good. I would have rather that, you know, Mira Giorgio play the good guy. She doesn't necessarily have to be so snide and snarky and then in private moments be genuine. Like, why can't she just, like she's, yeah, she's upset that she's in the prime universe, but I mean, at the same time, isn't she having fun?
00:38:03
Speaker
Hasn't she been given this great opportunity? So why is she flip-flopping on how she's acting? It's weird. It's weird. Well, I think that there's a huge... I don't think when you're an emperor and everything you want is at your... You're basically... I don't think anything can be as good as that again. So she's gonna be constantly...
00:38:28
Speaker
shoulder about it like i just can't imagine life in 31 as as cool as it is compares to like just saying oh go kill destroy that planet and everyone does it you know i mean like it's like a whole different thing now she has red tape she has crats she's just like being handled basically constantly and so i do think that like that's fitting
00:38:51
Speaker
But that's her fault. She chose to join Section 31. Why didn't she just friggin leave Federation space, go somewhere else and become the Emperor again? She could have done that. Yeah, she was part of the universe. And she could have done that in the prime time, in the prime universe. She could have done it again. Oh, maybe deep down, maybe deep down she really is trying to be the good guy. And that's just gradually being revealed throughout the season. So do you want to see a redemption arc with the character that used to eat people and be a xenophobic racist dictator?
00:39:20
Speaker
And she's worse than Hitler. She's killed so many more people than the worst people in history in any universe. Let's see if she can be good. This is like the story of if Hitler could be a good guy or something, I don't know.
00:39:42
Speaker
You guys, you know what I mean? Like it's, when you really think about it, I mean, she doesn't deserve to be like, you know, Roman free. She deserves to be put on trial for Michael regrets.
00:39:57
Speaker
We can't judge her. We can't, it's like that episode with the Husnak. We can't really judge her for her crimes because we don't have a frame of reference for it. That delighted PJ that I said the Husnak. I also, someone mentioned them being like
00:40:21
Speaker
first out by the apple scene but I actually liked it because it kind of like tied into the Kobayashi Maru type thing where she's just kind of bided time eating an apple because she knows that she doesn't she's not going to be detained she needed like Leland to like give the
00:40:36
Speaker
you know, give the words to let her go. So I kind of like that. And I can almost imagine that the actual Giorgio might have had a similar quirk. And who knows, maybe Kirk got that from studying her when he was in the Academy or, you know, I don't know. I loved how she dropped the apple. What did you guys think of May?
00:41:05
Speaker
I would be okay if we never saw May again. I'm not really sure what I was supposed to think about May in the show. I liked her the most in this episode, but I don't know. I don't know what.
00:41:22
Speaker
I think, yeah, you could leave. Well, no, Tilly says that she believes the universe will bring them back together. They pinky swear. Yeah. Which is like, wink, wink, we're going to do it again, right? But I also believe that the universe will bring me 10 million dollars. So that hasn't happened yet. That actress, the actress who plays Mae, she's a Canadian chick that has a really weird YouTube channel that
00:41:50
Speaker
All y'all should check out. She makes really weird videos of her singing in her apartment and weird stuff. That reminds me, there was what she called, I forgot what she was called, but one of the Klingons in season one was a Canadian actor as well. They grabbed them on Toronto, right? Because that's where they filmed. And she had this random YouTube channel as well. But she used to sing songs on a ukulele. But then she would sing, like,
00:42:18
Speaker
just inappropriate Lil Jon songs on the ukulele. Skeet skeet. It was hilarious. So they're casting on YouTube now. Sean, you could be on Star Trek Discovery, dude.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, they tend to like only hire Canadians. Canadian actors, to be fair, not just Canadian randos. And I happen to know that he wants to be an Andorian because of the four genders or something like that. I forget what it was. So simply as an Andorian.
00:42:57
Speaker
I wonder what should the Dorian porn to see how all the four genders like connect together. We're talking in drunk space lines. But how many types of uniforms do they have?
00:43:10
Speaker
We're saving this. We're saving this question for drug space nine. So audience, if you want to know more about Andorian genders and Andorian pornos, feel free to listen to drug space nine when that episode is released. Wow, that totally threw me off.
Visual Storytelling and Technical Elements
00:43:39
Speaker
Where did the admiral, like, how did the admiral get there quickly or was there like a time to save their life? Did they never show how anybody gets anywhere? They saved like a million dollars per episode without establishing jobs. Where did number one come from when she beamed over in the last episode? The use of the technology and the ships on Discovery is appalling. None of it makes sense, but it just, it serves the plot.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. There you go. Let's use it. But I think P.O.S. is guilty of that too. How P.O.S. came out in the 60s. I know, but if you can't compare. But if you're gonna be like...
00:44:18
Speaker
But also, TNG does it, DS9, DS9 doesn't believe, I think. Mistakes of the past do not justify mistakes of today. We have to learn from them. I agree, I agree. I don't know how much of a mistake that is not to show where someone's beaming in from. It's not a mistake. It's a conscious decision to not give a shit.
00:44:36
Speaker
I do dislike it. I do wish that I could see the ship, or the planet, or the star base, or whatever. But I feel like- Tillie murdered that person in the short tricks. She straight up murdered her princess, being the moon, onto a rock into space, and that was it, right? I mean...
00:44:55
Speaker
I'm wondering if they just think that that's maybe like boring and slow paced to show like, you know, a lot of episodes of Next Generation would open with the enterprise next to an Excelsior class starship, because they were reusing the footage from Encounter at Farpoint in the USS Hood. And it's like someone is like, you know, it's like a log entry, Captain Picard is like, yeah, so and so beamed over today to, you know, help us with this. And you go into the story. I think we're as on Discovery, it has a very, uh,
00:45:23
Speaker
high energy fast pace to it that kind of feels like they might have borrowed from the Kelvin timeline movies. And I feel like they're trying to just incorporate that into the into the storytelling and don't want to waste time with an establishing shot that they don't need. I would love to see it, though. Yeah. How how does the character may how does she not know things like
00:45:51
Speaker
She doesn't know what tears are. She doesn't know that Cobra is a human. She's some kind of brilliant thing, scientists of some sort, because her and Tilly have that conversation about how brilliant they both are. But is she tricking Tilly into hunting down Cobra, knowing that she's been in Tilly's head too. She's been around other humans. She's been on the bridge. And so she knows what humans are. She knows that there are other species on the ship and she sees Cobra and doesn't recognize that
00:46:21
Speaker
So her telling Tilly is a monster, like her telling Tilly, Cobra is a monster is like this weak plot device to give us that surprise when all she could have said was, there's a man from your universe in here messing stuff up.
00:46:39
Speaker
Except that he's not. So this is where I want to talk about Culver a little bit. So she describes in one scene, she says that after one of the jumps that Discovery did, they had an energy reading. What are we calling them? The mycelial aliens, right? Or whatever. Oh, what are they called? Jessip. Jessip, yeah.
00:47:06
Speaker
So the Jasep found this energy reading, and then they use their technology, which appears to us like magic, to reconstruct Culber. But as we see later on, he exists in their universe, right? So he is a monster in a sense. I kind of liked it. I thought it was very like Frankenstein's monster.
00:47:28
Speaker
or like, you know, that kind of thing. It's like, he's actually, at that point, he's actually not human. He is thing, like, you know, unique to, to the mycelial network and to the, to the, to these aliens or whatever, to these, to these beings. And, and he exists in a state that's like, kind of like he functions human because that's how they reconstructed it. Like they just like used his,
00:47:57
Speaker
energy to to like transform them back into whatever approximate but and then I think the reason why is they refer monsters because they thought like oh we're gonna like bring this thing back to life and it's gonna be but it's
00:48:12
Speaker
But he's like, he like goes off and like starts covering himself in, you know, whatever the jub jub tree or whatever. I actually, I actually thought of, I actually thought of this as like, kind of like, you know, I think it's funny that they, but in season one, they were doing a lot of Alice in Wonderland references and Alice in Wonderland.
00:48:33
Speaker
I know, but but they're not talking about him as much. Like, you know, how Burnham was reading, you know, like when she's running away from the tardy grade, she's like, like saying a passage to herself. I wish they kept actually do quirky things, which were cool, because this felt like through the looking glass, it felt like Alice in Wonderland. It felt like he was the jabber walkie in a sense. It had like that kind of and I actually like I had the same qualms at the first viewing because it was a little I think you have to watch it a couple of times to kind of start seeing these things.
00:49:03
Speaker
But then the transporter, the organ transporter, Tim and human again at the end, but the universe. So I think it is something else. I like that idea. The organic transporter, I'm sorry, and how they were able to use that to reconstruct them.
00:49:26
Speaker
You could say that Mae is unable to see him as they do. Like she's... Right. She actually... And there's all these... So I wish they had like a little more explanations. Like the down stuff that you were talking about, the black goo that was like, you know, drifting and stuff like that. There's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty cool. It reminded me of the season one water droplets or whatever, but it was very cool. The way they brought Cobra back was actually
00:49:56
Speaker
my favorite part of the whole episode. And right up to the point where they find him to the end of the episode is pure joy. But I have one problem with it. What? That is, they said that they could, I'm sorry. They said that they could resurrect him by using his DNA in normal space so that the cocoon could rebuild his body based on his DNA. I just wish that they would have had them actually like go get some of his DNA or something like
00:50:25
Speaker
How in the next generation, one time they had to save Dr. Pulaski by using her DNA from a piece of hair. They pull off of a brush and like beaming her through the transporter and reconstructing her with the DNA they got from a strand of her hair.
00:50:43
Speaker
I wish they would have shown something like that for Dr. Kohler. They had his corpse in the morgue or something and they had to use that material. How cool would it have been if they actually inserted his dead corpse into the
00:51:00
Speaker
Okay, this corpse is like a year old, by the way. It's the future. It's the future. Yeah, but they wouldn't have it on the U.S. This discovery. Why don't you be driving around with this corpse? He's probably buried there on Earth or something. Yeah, I mean... Stavids actually won't let them take it away, and he takes it out of cold storage. What a horrible person. Okay, that was really bad. Well, like, if he's still could've had his blood on, you know what I mean?
00:51:25
Speaker
No, you can't do that.
00:51:34
Speaker
But I think that would have been cool if, you're right, Stamets just injected a sample into the cocoon or something, you're right. But still, overall, I think, though, I agree with you, PJ. It all came together very beautifully. And I love that scene because it actually tricked me. When he puts his hand through and he can't come through, I thought that was it. Yeah, that was really it. I was like, OK, he's not coming back for good.
00:51:59
Speaker
and then they figured it out last minute so I like that. That's neat. I like the concept of like the idea behind the episode of going to like the Mycelia Network. I like the idea that there are like people in there or like beings in there. I even like the whole concept of how they managed to like reconstruct Cobra and how he couldn't like he's basically a hologram in there in there like Mycelia Network. I loved all that.
00:52:25
Speaker
It's just that there are like certain issues with the episode that bug me. And I think we could have spent more time on the science and explaining how the mycelium network is. And rather than all of the section 31 stuff, which at this point is kind of useless. And another thing about May not recognizing Culber as human is that she tells Tilly not to touch the bark of the tree. She says it's harmful to us.
00:52:49
Speaker
But how does she know whether or not it's harmful to Tilly, I guess? I don't know. Yeah, I think she just kind of used it. Doesn't want her to transfer it to her, I guess. Culver's kind of an anomaly, because he's made out of their mycelial matter, and he's not of the normal space type of like that R universe type of material that's crossed over. He's something that, from her perspective, originated within the mycelial network. I also love it.
00:53:20
Speaker
I also love Pike berating Tyler because he's basically a response. Yeah.
00:53:27
Speaker
the response that I had to him like why is he why is he still on the ship? Why does everybody want to be his friend? Why are they so understanding? They're a little too understanding. Mike is the physical manifestation of the Star Trek Discovery audience. He's the one that's correcting season two. He's the one that's asking the questions like why the hell is Tyler on my bridge? He's the guy like why the hell are we not using screens? He is us but in the show.
00:53:55
Speaker
Hashtag, we are Pike. We are Pike. Absolutely.
00:54:00
Speaker
I like that a lot. I will go ahead. I was just going to say, yeah, he like shows up. He's like, OK, tell tell me all of your names. No one knows any of your names. Yeah, we're going to have we're going to have like some fun and we're going to get each other's back and it'd be like a good Starfleet. It takes care of one another. And what the hell is the sport drum shit? Well, why are you why are you sport jumping? And I turn off
Burnham's Role and Responsibility
00:54:23
Speaker
these holograms. We talk on screens. Section 31, I don't want you here.
00:54:28
Speaker
He's the Twitter of a statutory discovery. I do think it's brilliant in a way that CBS, it does feel like CBS took some of these critiques to heart. I'm just saying CBS is a blanket. It's whoever's hard to show, which I guess it's Alex Kurtzman at this point.
00:54:56
Speaker
But I do think it actually, I think that also endures to the shows in because I did, I'm like, Oh, you know what, like there, the show can correct, it can like, you know, solve some of these major like thought problems or whatever that
00:55:15
Speaker
are confusing and again like i said i feel like season two this whole job so far is like almost making season one invaluable because like now you kind of have to watch season one
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, but like, you know, like you don't have to watch Star Trek. You don't have to watch TNG season one. You could get into it from like season anywhere, right? Like that's how the show's set up. But like, I thought like, Oh, well, I'll never have to watch season one of Star Trek again. But now I'm like actually curious because it's like, Oh, okay. Maybe there's things I missed in season one. So, you know, I think season two is just like,
00:55:52
Speaker
like making up for so much, so much stuff that happened. It's like, it's just a big, continuous story. Anyway, if you were to watch, if somebody knew what didn't, what didn't see the show before, just started watching from one to 20. There wouldn't be a real break in the season like that. They would notice if they didn't really know where, if it ended at 14 or 15 or 16, you know what I mean? So in that way, it's just you have, if you're going to watch season two, you pretty much have to watch season one.
00:56:21
Speaker
Unless you just watch the recaps. Just watch the recaps. It just works with story arcs, doesn't it? You got the Klingon War story arc, now you got the Red Angel story arc, and then they'll find some other way to make Burnham still the main character in the third season. Well, she's going to be captain. She is the main... Wait, sorry, okay. Sean, she's the main character. Okay, if they make her captain...
00:56:43
Speaker
It defeats the bulbs of the show. Burnham is the main character of Star Trek Discovery. It's not that they're gonna make her, that she is the main character. I agree. I didn't formulate my sentence well. What I mean is, sometimes it feels like rather than having situations take place and following a character in those situations, they're creating situations for the character.
00:57:10
Speaker
They needed Spock and they needed Pike or they needed Spock specifically to maintain Burnham as the main character. If they didn't have the Spock arc, then what would they do to keep us focused on Burnham? What's the point of following Burnham? The point of following the captain is because the captain knows everything that's going on. There's a logic to following the captain and the main characters
00:57:39
Speaker
the bridge crew on a ship, right? I would have loved to follow a first officer, like Burnham, like an actual first officer, because she's never been first officer. She's the first officer in two episodes, and she's not an officer, not a science officer. But I would have loved to follow the story of a first officer that transfers from ship to ship, and you kind of see her evolution as a character throughout Starfleet. That would have been good. But this isn't that, this is different. This is just Burnham and like her family matters.
00:58:07
Speaker
which I did think it was interesting. One of the scenes that stood out this episode was when she basically confronts your brother.
00:58:21
Speaker
back in the nebula. I think Saniqua Martin Green is a lot more comfortable in the skin of the character season. I do think that I, well, I think we're supposed to not like her after she commits, you know, mutiny and is responsible for the death of her captain and a war. And, you know, and I do think
00:58:46
Speaker
For me, the payoff wasn't as good. Like I know that she gets her rank restored and everything. And I just, to me, the whole Klingon war, season one, just, you know, it's just, it feels like a hodgepodge. She's a much better character this season. She is.
00:59:04
Speaker
Because even before she does this whole thing with the war, even before that you see her in an episode and she's already a very annoying character. Like the human trying to be a Vulcan, she's all condescending and annoying. She's already a pain in the ass and I don't know how Saru and Georgie lived with her for seven years.
00:59:25
Speaker
I think the actress herself kind over does it here and there when she's trying to portray the human side, the emotion. I appreciate what they're doing with her in that context.
00:59:36
Speaker
In The Walking Dead, she was very emotional. She had very emotional scenes, and she was very, very good at that. But then they hired her, because she's good at emotion, to do an emotionless character, which was stupid. She still has emotion coming through, like when she's crying on Saru's deathbed. But then that's after, in the beginning, when she arrives, she's supposed to portray like kind of an emotionless human. She's like a human emulating a Vulcan, and that was a bit of an awkward performance.
01:00:06
Speaker
But then she mutinies against her captain out of a fear against the Klingons who killed her family, and then immediately after she's just burdened with unbearable guilt. Like they were putting emotion in the character, I think. So then she just wasn't doing it right. The emotion was good at the title of Death of It. It's just that I don't care about that specifically, that story, but the acting was good then.
01:00:30
Speaker
I think she's very, she has that Vulcan stoicism all throughout right up until like episode six, seven. Then, then she starts to like blossom as a human, I guess, when she starts falling in love. And now we're seeing like, she's fallen in love, she's got her heart broken. And now she's
01:00:50
Speaker
on board with Pike, and she's liking Pike a lot more than Lorca, you know that. And a better part of her personality are coming out. That makes no sense on a story level, because it like, okay, fine. It's only been seven episodes since we've seen her, but it's been seven years that she's been with humans. It's what is all of a sudden she starts. Oh, that's a thing too. That whole time that seven years she's been like that. But the thing that bugs me is that she doesn't know anything about Saru.
01:01:18
Speaker
But if you watch... She doesn't know he has a sister. She doesn't know a situation. She doesn't know...
01:01:23
Speaker
Pretty much, and he had to explain his threat ganglia to her in the first episode. I think it's become an inside joke on Star Trek that just don't tell you shit until you need to know. But Sean, to your point, and also PJ, I do have to say that
01:01:48
Speaker
In season one, the one thing I did think that was maybe unclear but that I do see them do is that like in the flashbacks, she arrives on the Shonzo. She is like super Vulcan and everything like that. I was gonna bring that up. And then there's like the the Burnham that we meet on May 11th, you know, Battle of the Binary Stars is kind of
01:02:13
Speaker
she's playful. She's like making sparks at Saru. She's like, you know, she's like flying through the asteroid field. Right. And it's it's it's her emotion that actually drives her to make the mistake of like, you know, trying to protect the crew in this like weird way. So I do think that like they maybe they did the best job of showing it, but I do think that they tried.
01:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, she was very different than when she stepped off the transporter pad with with Serac seven years earlier.
Character Performances Review
01:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, they made a point of showing how stoic she was in that scene. Oh, look, look, look how open she is. So you couldn't miss that. But I find in episode one of season two, it's like they went right back to the beginning with her. And then she changes episode two on which is I find she's a completed character, which is so
01:03:04
Speaker
She has she's almost like she was when she met Georgia for the first time before the seven year journey on the Shenzhou. But I like I like the explanation behind Burnham's decision to kill to Guvma, which I didn't like personally, was that she's a human suppressing her emotions so much that when she reaches a critical point of decision making, her emotions get the better of her. And maybe if she learned
01:03:31
Speaker
how to balance that more, much like Spock will have to learn in this season. That's how you avoid making big mistakes. They should have brought that up in the show because that's a very valid point. It probably will. What did you guys think of the performances in this episode? Everybody but, you know, Michelle Yeoh, who is like on and off with me. Okay.
01:03:59
Speaker
I like the girl who plays Mae. I like her a lot. Not the character so much.
01:04:06
Speaker
I've really felt the emotion between Culber and Stamets. And I actually, I didn't want Culber to be fully resurrected. I kind of wanted him to, I don't know, maybe be like a forced ghost that can appear or, cause I didn't want his death to have no consequences. That would go over well. I did. Well, okay. So that's something interesting to talk about is that like, so now what happens to Tyler, we had all these reasons to hate him and like, he kind of gets a free pass. Now. Yeah.
01:04:32
Speaker
And you're going to have some cool drama between him being on the ship with Stamets and with Culver. And they even teased that with Stamets reaction to seeing Tyler on the bridge. Yeah, they did. I love that, that it was subtle. It was just a pause. Like he kind of like was giving a briefing and then he just looks up and pauses for it. I just really like, again, the season's just like on fire, I think in terms of like I have a briefing and things like that.
01:05:01
Speaker
They have a briefing room to do the briefings now. They've established that they have a table in which they can brief people. I did. They'll do it. So much cool. Is the brief room, is the briefing room the same room as pike's ready room or my. Yeah. For some reason they were having very big. I think the briefing room is different because they were having like soup for lunch. The officers were having a lunch room. Weren't they? It was just a room with salt.
01:05:30
Speaker
Okay, okay. At the end of that meeting in the briefing room, Pike walks in and sits at his desk, so... Yeah. Uh, gotcha, okay. But that's to me just like... The room is actually so big and so well designed that it can be shot in many different ways, and I like how, like, they're...
01:05:46
Speaker
They're trying to shoot it in like many days. The way it was shot in this episode in particular was very, very well done. It reminds me of the original series where Kirk doesn't have a ready room, but they have that, that conference room that they, they have a lot of meetings in. And so I always just assumed that Kirk chose not to use a ready room because he just likes to be in the captain's chair. But that's what we just never saw it. That's all you know what I mean?
01:06:12
Speaker
Maybe this room that Pike is using as his office, maybe that is the discovery equivalent of that TOS conference room. Isn't that the Lorca room, like, redesigned? No, the Lorca room redesigned as that new science lab that they have. Oh, OK. They're using the Lorca ready room set for that. That's what I thought at first, is that Pike's ready room was just Lorca's ready room redone. But you notice that you enter
01:06:42
Speaker
pikes ready room through a turbo left. They like go straight to the room. You need a whole way. You need a whole way. It's stupid. The only access to your room is the turbo lift. Well, but John, I feel like it makes sense because you have that big bull, the sphere.
01:07:08
Speaker
as the bridge on top and then probably like all, like, you know, the ready room, his room, I don't know. It's just, we don't know what the spec, a track yard's a cool break, but we don't really know what the. No one knows. There's an entire shipyard inside the ship, apparently. So. Are we going to get, are we going to get those guide to the discovery or are we going to get Stamets guide to the discovery? What's it going to be? Oh my God. Stamets is not an engineer.
01:07:34
Speaker
I know, but he was kind of like the chief engineer during the sciences. I wanted to talk about Mary Wiseman for a bit because honestly, I think a performance is sometimes like it's on and off. I mean, in one of the previous episodes where she had that emotional moment with Burnham in the recce room in their quarters.
01:07:55
Speaker
um it was amazing both of the the actors had like amazing performances but in this sometimes it just feels so freaking forced and cringy and the acting is not good the whole the moment she gets dragged out of the the the bio transporter and she appears in the marsila network all of that scene is terrible she bothered me in episode one
01:08:23
Speaker
There's one part in this episode I didn't like, and it's where she's walking with the rifle, and she's like, this is the number three better than number two and one. I'm like, that's not funny. It's like she's reading the memory alpha page of a Type 3 phaser. It's like, who are you in the Type 1 or Type 2, and we're powerful. I don't know how to get out of here, but I'm going to believe, and she starts storming off, and it's like, clearly, the way to get out is the same way you got in. Did anybody notice the cocoon there?
01:08:51
Speaker
Did anybody notice the shot where her badge was on the other side? They had to mirror the shot because she was looking in the wrong direction. They didn't digitally fix it or whatever. That was funny. I have enjoyed her from the beginning. I think. Ooh, awesome. The damn nebula. We'll be back. What's that? You were in the nebula again.
01:09:21
Speaker
You were saying you enjoyed it until the beginning. That was the last we heard. Section 31 doesn't want me to give my opinions today. The guy pulling the microphone cords on Forrest Gump when he's trying to speak. That's what it's like. Oh my gosh.
01:09:40
Speaker
The only thing I can say about Vietnam is... And that's all I gotta say about that. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. What didn't we cover? Have we talked about everything? What more nitpicks do we have? Now we could go to the nitpick corner. Let's go full nitpick. The weapons locker is a hallway.
01:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Those aren't real guns. Those are the fake guns that they use in the VR room. Also, but in Okay, but in in in first contact the web in a
01:10:25
Speaker
Aren't they in the hallway too? Don't they just grab them from one of the hallways if I recall correctly? It's like a board protocol. Maybe you press a button and it just makes your phasers appear in your hallways. Don't they open panels in the hallway? It's not just like a rack in the middle of the hallway.
01:10:45
Speaker
but it's still in the hallway to be fair right like it's still just it's like it's like there's like weapon i bet you there's like phasers on every you know hidden all over the ship just in case you're invaded especially after the klingon war i would imagine it's like you know we brought back the first amendment after
01:11:09
Speaker
Sorry, we also probably thank you Hologram is already active when Pike enters his ready room, which I found weird I mean like the guy the holograms already active. He's what just like standing there Yeah Yeah, he might have hacked into it What did you guys think of you addressed as an invisible hologram?
01:11:35
Speaker
What did you guys think of the whole hiding as an asteroid floating? Sir, there's an asteroid following us. You gotta think of asteroids and shit out in space. Even in unoccupied parts of the solar system, there's still some rocks and stuff far away from each other floating around.
Series Continuity and Development
01:11:58
Speaker
The way that it de-cloaked though from Asteroid, I really like that because to me that works better than if they just have total complete cloaking technology like we would see later in Star Trek.
01:12:11
Speaker
And it also reminds me of the technology the Romulans used in season four, the greatest season of enterprise, when they had the ability to disguise their drone ship as other ships. So I feel like maybe section 31 has repurposed that technology. Right. Yeah. And section 31 is like there are an entity now in the show that can be given the freedom to use all kinds of technology that
01:12:39
Speaker
that you can't really argue against because, I mean, come on, get real. I mean, if they used holograms, people at this hologram debate, they've used holograms before, a hundred years before discovery. We'll have holograms like 50 years, 25 years from now. Like communicating for holograms will be a thing in our lifetime. I've liked it, but promise holograms like the fifties or sixties and we still don't, we don't have flying cars. We don't have hoverboards.
01:13:07
Speaker
We don't have like, where is all this stuff? Yeah, but we have phones. Has anyone seen one of these holographic performances at a concert? Like has anyone actually seen it? You have to have like a smoke screen or like you have to have dust particles in order for it to work. Oh, okay. Gotcha. A glass sheet and.
01:13:32
Speaker
You can look at it from different angles and see it as a 3D thing to an extent, but it's not really. It's just basically looking at something projected on a wall almost. We're not nearly there yet, but we're getting there.
01:13:49
Speaker
I thought the sequence where the discovery jumps in a celestial plane was awesome. Like, that it was liquidy. Like, it looked like a shipwreck almost, like if the discovery ran aground on a coral reef. And in fact, that's actually a more appropriate analogy for a cellular network. Like, all the plants do move. Like, if you're underwater, it does look like a kind of like a trippy space coral reef, in a way, with a little cap-sized ship that was slowly sinking.
01:14:20
Speaker
I personally wouldn't admit it like aesthetically chosen to show it that way because I don't, I feel like, I feel like the ship should have been sliced and like visually inside normal space. You should have just seen like half of the ship, not the whole wavy shit because I don't like that. That implies that the Marcela network is crossing into normal space and that there's like kind of, I think the maneuver, I think the maneuver that they did actually broke
01:14:46
Speaker
like queer rift or fissure and so what you're seeing is like from the point of impact out you're actually seeing like a weird you know hybrid hybrid just bought it i loved it had i done it i would have looked maybe less cool but all of this is to make it look very cool but um i think it would have made more sense to just have the ship kind of only be half appearing in normal space
01:15:14
Speaker
as if it were just chopped off, but then you would know that it's actually in another dimension or something. That would confuse modern audiences and their brains would explode. I think there's so many visual flourishes in this show that are just designed to look pretty. Yeah, the budget is so high. Yeah, and they believe you don't have to do this to justify the amount of money being spent, when in reality,
01:15:42
Speaker
They did simpler shots. And I know some of the shots are really beautiful, but they just held it back. There's an elevator shot in episode one where they show the outside of the elevator shaft and it's all like robots. Yeah, it's terrible. I hate that. Everyone hates that. It's totally unnecessary and it would have saved them like, I don't know, a million. I don't know how much that would have cost.
01:16:03
Speaker
I don't think we'll ever see that again. I think we could have used that money to pay Sean to be an Endurian extra walking around on the background. M. Night Shyamalan has the same kind of issue where when he does a movie with no budget, it's great. But then when you give him like a bloated budget, he does The Last Evander.
01:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, so we're at Earth. Okay, so. What's that? What was the other reference you made, PJ? Oh, after Earth.
01:16:44
Speaker
Oh, after. So Discovery's the same thing. They should maybe like pull the budget back, like restrain them. And they would have like, if you had less of a budget, then you wouldn't have like the opportunity to flourish to show with all of this bullshit. You'd have to concentrate on making the story interesting and focus on the plot. And then you could have simpler shots. Anyway, you wouldn't have to do all this hologram shenanigans all the time. Yeah.
01:17:10
Speaker
I think the next half of the season might be a bit. I don't know how much they blew on the first few episodes or whatever that they could. I don't know if they made up for it in the second half, but maybe they were given less money for the second half, and we probably might get more thoughtful. Well, apparently Gretchen Jay Berg and Aaron Harvitz went way over budget on on episode one. And so that contributed to that and the other thing.
01:17:40
Speaker
Got them fired, right? The funny thing is that first episode was directed by Alex Kurtzman. So if you want to put on a tinfoil hat and be conspiracy theorist, then Alex Kurtzman directing that episode blow up the budget to get Berg and Harbert fired so that he could just run the show himself.
01:18:04
Speaker
So I'm not saying anything, and I don't want to advance anything, but I find it very convenient that Alex Kurtzman, only weeks after the firing of Kurtz and Jay Berg and Aaron Harvitz, came up with his five-year plan for expanding the Star Trek universe and everything. It's very, I don't know,
01:18:30
Speaker
It works very well in his favor. I'm very happy about the situation, by the way. I'm very happy that Alex Kurtzman is taking charge and running this thing. The idea of getting all these other shows, that's great. And hopefully the plot holes and inconsistencies, which aren't like a lot in season two so far. It's better in season one, but maybe in the second half, if it's actually better and more fleshed out and more logical,
01:18:59
Speaker
That could be an indication that Alex Kurtzman's influence or taking over the franchise is a good sign. And I'm not sure about him yet. Season 2 could fall apart for all we know. I think when we see the Picard show either late this year or
01:19:18
Speaker
early next year. They're saying it'll come out this year, but I'm skeptical. Stuff is always late. Yeah, I think that'll be the true testing ground for Kurtzman's leadership. A December 2019 release date is realistic if they start filming in April, which they are. And apparently it's only 10 episodes. Yeah, it's just weird to premiere right before Christmas.
01:19:43
Speaker
Because that's going to... Oh my god. I have a theory about the Picard Show. I think the first episode of the Picard Show is going to take place on New Year's Eve, $23.99. And it's going to air on December 31, 2019. Oh, yeah. That'll be cool. Hey, Google, what day of the week is December 31?
01:20:10
Speaker
The 31st of December 2019 falls on a Tuesday. On a Tuesday, huh? It'll be ready Tuesday, like Star Trek Generations. There we go. Starfleet boy's gone. Starfleet boy's gone.
Episode Reflections and Ratings
01:20:22
Speaker
The host is gone. We've lost our captain. What do we do? Call Saru. When did he vanish? He vanished. Well, you guys were talking about when it's going to air. Oh my god. Oh my god. What do we do?
01:20:39
Speaker
Carry on. Let the show go on. Anyway, I wasn't sure about this episode. The thing is, I really liked it the first time I watched it. But then when I rewatched it the second time, a lot of these details bugged me. Because I was all enchanted by the whole sci-fi concept of the Micellar network and all of that. But then when I rewatched it the second time, I focused more on the details and, you know, I suppose the nitpicking.
01:21:07
Speaker
I'm just going to be curious what I do to all of the shows. I have the opposite experience. When I first watched it, I was very disappointed. But then after I watched it a couple other times. And also, I saw some other people's reactions. And I watched Kit Walski's video, and he really liked it. And after some other people brought up the more positive things in it, it made me realize that it was better than I initially gave it credit for.
01:21:36
Speaker
I'm still a little conflicted on it. Yeah, I don't like the whole Giorgio thing and tricking us into thinking we're going to meet somebody when we're not going to meet them. The Spock tease. Well, they're doing it a lot. Yay, Starfleet boy has returned. Has he? He can't quite cross into normal space yet. He's trying to make it out of my silly old network.
01:22:04
Speaker
We need us DNA. We need the transfers buddy. Who has this DNA? We need them, my seleo cocoon. I was watching Trek Yards and they brought up a good point about the crossing over between when the ship is in the mycelial network and how they say it's going to eat through the hull. But if the network is also inside the ship, shouldn't it be eating through the hull inside or shouldn't it be eating through like, you know,
01:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, if Tilly and May could get in the ship, then you would think that a lot of the other Jossup would come in also.
01:22:41
Speaker
Unless maybe they had to go through an airlock that they just opened for a little bit and they walked in and the doors closed. It's worse than that. It's implied that the ship is half in the mycelium network and half in normal space, which means that the mycelium network technically should be both inside and outside the ship. Because when you're in normal space, you're not in normal space. Only outside the ship, you're in normal space inside as well. But why are the spores attacking the outside, but not anything else? I don't get that. But anyway, yeah. But they are attacking the inside, aren't they? Because it's got that black effect, right?
01:23:10
Speaker
It's just that the eating it away slowly. Yeah. I think that there's a different, like the, the network itself, the environment itself is attacking the ship from all angles. It's just that the, the just sips, whatever they called, um, they are physically attacking from the outside. Isn't it? Okay. That kind of works. There was a cool special effect when it showed the ring spinning, when they come out of the mycelial network and you see when,
01:23:37
Speaker
whenever the portions of the ship that spin when it comes out of the mycelial network, you see that the hull has been damaged from the Jossette eating through it. Well, it was like a cool little visual effect they did. I like that. I also hope they evacuated all of those spinny rings because if they didn't, they just straight up murdered everyone in the two rings. They just didn't go through there and get crown and bird like Rick and Morty.
01:24:00
Speaker
Okay, I love the fact that they made a reference to the USS Glynn and to what happened on the USS Glynn because it kind of felt like closure to me. Like we went to the USS Glynn, we see all these mangled bodies and then we just never talk about it again. We now have two Starfleet boys in our discussion. It's Starfleet boy and Mirror Universe Starfleet boy. He's like, can you hear me? Can you see me? I'm so glad you guys are still there. Yeah.
01:24:25
Speaker
Wait, we have two of you now. I'm ejecting the mirror Starfleet boy. He's gone. Oh God. Oh, what if that was actually the prime Starfleet boy in this mirror universe? What did I miss? What's going on? I can't do video. Something's wrong with our internet here. Well, you're in the nebula. Yes, it's true. Yeah. You're talking to one of those modified communicators that Saru gave Burnham.
01:24:52
Speaker
Anybody have any predictions for next episode? Have you seen the trailer? I haven't seen the trailer. Yes, I saw the trailer. Okay, so let's not talk about it then. I know that it's going to be a Kelpian episode that someone already told me. But the monster in it looks sick. I didn't see that. Okay, the barrel looks like, what's his name? A Dementor. Yeah, but crossed with Armus. Armus, yes.
01:25:16
Speaker
It's insane. It's like a tar monster-looking thing? Yeah, it is, really. I'm pretty sure that's a bawl. Yeah, well, that is a bawl, clearly. But then the bawl, apparently, are like a warp-capable species. Maybe that's the creature that they feed. Maybe that's their god. And they have to feed him. OK, so the bawl is like... The bawl are...
01:25:43
Speaker
The anti-red angels, right? They're the fallen red angels. They're like the devils. It does look demonic though. It really does look like something out of a crazy horror movie. But as Gary suggested, they don't actually eat the Kelpians. What they do is they sell them to the Murray universe. Yeah, that makes sense.
01:26:04
Speaker
because the demote is so high in the mirror universe. I think we're done with the mirror universe on this story. I don't think we're going back there.
Culber's Return and Actor Confusion
01:26:12
Speaker
Do you notice how Sarah was like catfishing that being? He's like all tied up. He's like, this is a lie. That was a great use of catfishing. We need Neve Schumann on the episode revealing that it's a catfish. That's funny.
01:26:34
Speaker
Uh, did you guys, did you guys talk about anything while I was gone or just about how I was in the. He talked about the, my cellular network eating the ship. Oh, what is, okay. Well, I'll have to listen. I'll have to go back and listen to the, to the discussion, but, um,
01:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, it all it all just seemed like coral and and like water. It was very cool. I thought it was interesting. Like the little black stuff floating off of the surfaces in the ship looked kind of like the the water droplets from season one, episode three, when they did the black alert.
01:27:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm like maybe that was the the universe. Oh look at that thing. That does look like Our let's skin of evil. It's it's hideous. It's like venom Yeah, it's got a very symbiotic Let me give you the the chair here. Oh, I'm gonna get a content warning for oh you are okay. Yeah, I
01:27:37
Speaker
Probably also because I said it. No, I guess not. Maybe it's quick enough. They would have to be really fickle. Those ships are cool. There it is. Oh, wow. It's freaking scary. I love it though. Yeah, those red eyes look cool. That looks badass. Okay, so you guys notice the acting. It does look like Doug Jones. It's not. Doug Jones clarified that it was this other actor who was in Slender Man.
01:28:05
Speaker
And he's like, he's actually, I think he's taller than taller and skinnier than, okay. You can believe that. Wow. Okay. Cause it was kind of, um, Oh, I forget his name. He's doing the, yeah. The Jones style. Yep. Did y'all see, um, I don't know if any of y'all watched Buffy the vampire slayer. And you'll find the guy's name.
01:28:30
Speaker
Look up the gentleman from Buffy that Doug Jones played this really creepy looking villain in season four of Buffy, an episode called Hush. Slenderman portrayed by Doug Jones and Javier Votet. Yeah, it's a French name.
01:28:53
Speaker
It's not Spanish, I think. Oh, God. Javier is pretty pretty common name. OK, so he is Javier. Harvey, is that the same thing? So he was here in English. He was in Slenderman. It's the mummy.
01:29:17
Speaker
Um, insidious. The Alex Kurtzman mummy? Rick one, two, and three. Yes, the Alex Kurtzman mummy. Hey look, the Alex Kurtzman mummy isn't as bad as people say it is. That's what I hear. I need to, I need to watch it. The Alex Kurtzman mummy is a challenge because it was supposed to set up the entire dark universe as well. It wasn't just a mummy movie. I think that he did a respectable job on that. He sounded like he was very unhappy when he was working on that movie.
01:29:45
Speaker
like I read an interview with Kurtzman from right before Discovery season two premiered, where he talked about how he had kind of gotten depressed, wasn't very happy when he is like finishing editing The Mummy. And just a lot of the the political atmosphere that we're in today had kind of
01:30:04
Speaker
made him kind of depressed and it made him get in a head space where he wanted to tell more meaningful stories and more optimistic stories. And it really made him want to focus on Star Trek more so than it sounded like.
01:30:18
Speaker
he was thinking back when he wrote Star Trek 09 and Star Trek Into Darkness and so I kind of think he might have matured as a storyteller who used to just kind of write these action-heavy popcorn big-budget movies. Well he wrote just one and two I think.
01:30:36
Speaker
yeah but then he jumped ship he got out of that before it went completely one Transformers 2 already has like hey everyone's saying bumblebee everyone's saying bumblebee is like awesome yeah i need to see it it is legit it's the best transformers movie that's for sure that is a low bar no no the best transformers movie came out in 1986 and it was animated no bumblebee is bumblebee is a good movie i found it to be one of the like um
01:31:05
Speaker
one of the more interesting movies that I've seen this year. I want to see it. Well, it sounds like from our ancillary discussions that we've exhausted about Star Trek Discovery season five, season two, episode five, uh, uh, Saints of Imperfection. Do you guys know what that's an homage to? I didn't have time to look it up. Does anyone know why it's called that or what it means? I hate the titles in this show are so like,
01:31:34
Speaker
They're always referring to Greek mythology somehow, and it's like, just give us a straightforward title. I love the titles in Discovery, because they remind me of the original series. They're not these boring next generation or Voyager titles. They are try-hard titles, though. Try-hard titles. They're trying so hard. They're enticing. They make me want to watch. Context is for kings. I want to watch that. That sounds cool.
01:32:02
Speaker
What they sound fancier than the episode actually is. Yeah, I agree. That's how the original series was. You know what an enticing title is? An enticing title is, like, Death. You call an episode Death, you're like, holy shit, what's going to happen, right? Context. An enticing title is, like, A Mock Time, or For the World is Hollow and I've Touched the Sky, or The Savage Curtain. Those are enticing titles. My favorite title from Discovery so far is
01:32:33
Speaker
uh, magic to make the same as mango mad. It's like, you know, it's, it's, it's a nice title and it's just, it's fun, but I don't like titles like, uh,
Episode Ratings and Comparisons
01:32:43
Speaker
CVS pass you in Parabellum and most of the other one, Oh, I know before Karen or Sharon and all the other new Eden, those work. Yeah, those were, those were the worst. Um, come on. Yeah. Would it be great or awful if Culver ends up being like not quite human?
01:33:03
Speaker
Culver snaps Stamets neck. Oh yeah, we never did so much backlash. You're like, we're not going to bury our gay characters. Oh, think again, we are. Yeah, they're just murdering each other. I think Culver's going to be back to normal, and they're just, they're retconning a lot of things that they didn't season one. They're just retconning them in a way that kind of, like they're trying to make sense in the story.
01:33:32
Speaker
It's not like prison break where they just decapitate someone then bring her back.
01:33:36
Speaker
I was really enjoying Dr. Pollard. Do you think she'll remain? Was she on in season one? Was she around in the background in season one or what? She appeared right after Colbert died. Then we started seeing her. Is she the chief medical officer? I think that's a fair assumption. I don't think they've ever stated that clearly because they don't do that on Discovery. I want a chief medical officer and I want a chief engineer and I want engineering.
01:34:05
Speaker
Promote, um, uh, Jett Reno to chief engineer and make her the chief. Exactly. They could have killed, they could have killed someone in this episode, um, that someone like go through the half. Like the, the, and they, they would have killed the chief engineer. And then they, they bring in Reno as the chief engineer. They said this guy was the chief engineer all along. Now he's dead. So who cares? But now Reno's the chief engineer. That could have been cool.
01:34:33
Speaker
Totally joking, but there wasn't a political reason to kill anyone this episode, so there was no... It would have satisfied my lust to see more mangled bodies like in the US. You know what I would have liked? I did like the reference to the Glen in this episode too, by the way. It would have been nice to see Tignatero just as the engineer. They didn't have to, like, find her. She could have just showed up and said, well, I'm the engineer. And they'd go, hey, Chief Engineer of Reno.
01:35:04
Speaker
but then you wouldn't have the high worth of rescue mission, I guess so. And you wouldn't have had the space waste, the pod. But is it safe to assume that we do have a chief engineer, we just haven't met that character yet? Yeah, we just haven't seen him. Because you know what I said last week that the chief engineer sent me over here to work on the- Gotcha. Put something up on the firewall or something like that.
01:35:31
Speaker
Guys, Chief Engineer sent me to put gum in the wall. Yeah, to lock out the critical propulsion systems behind a firewall with gum. Great flavored. Oh, boy. I love you, Chief Engineer, to be O'Brien, like an ancestor of O'Brien. That would be really cool. That would be really cool. He's like, you're fixing it with gum.
01:36:02
Speaker
So I guess we'll give it ratings and closing statements. I will go first because Sean does not trust my ratings. He thinks I changed them. The doctor doesn't trust your ratings. It's true. I don't believe your ratings. I think they're all false.
01:36:21
Speaker
You give everything 10s and that doesn't count. Well, so far this season, except for last episode, I think I gave it a 9.5. I have to give this episode another 10. I'm sorry. I really, really loved it. I know it's such a flip from last season. I know I've fed you, but I'll be that one person. I'll represent that part of the world right now, which is the... I've drunk the Kool-Aid so far. It's a five episodes. I'm overdosing on the Kool-Aid. Are there storms in it?
01:36:49
Speaker
Okay, so if you were to rate the Expanse episodes, they would all be like 15s out of 10, right? Right, yes. No, it's true. The Expanse is holy. I don't think it can be rated. It's such a beautiful show. Do you guys watch The Expanse? I haven't watched it yet. I know, shame me.
01:37:05
Speaker
Fuck you, Father. You need to watch it. It's honestly, honestly, I wanted to be and I wish I was the Expanse like that's like we've talked about the Sean and I, but I feel like the Expanse is set in the past of Star Trek. Hmm. I tried watching three episodes. I got through three and then I didn't like it. And then somebody said, if you're not into the first season, start at season two, because that's when it really gets going.
01:37:34
Speaker
and they told me I don't need to see the first season. So I don't know. I got a good sense of the characters in the first three episodes. I like Thomas Jane. Yeah. But I think I'm going to try and watch a couple of random episodes because sometimes that works for a show you're not so sure about that has like- Maybe watch episodes like the two final episodes of season one. Okay. I would say also- Because if you want to get somebody in the game of Thrones say,
01:38:03
Speaker
Tell them to always watch the second last episode of a season. I think you should watch it. I think you should just watch it. I think you should just trudge through it because it'll click eventually and then things from season one will make sense when they reference them later on. You know what I mean? But I don't know. You worked for me with Breaking Bad though, because I think
01:38:27
Speaker
I started watching Breaking Bad. I see a bit of episodes in the first season, like one or two. And I didn't like, I was like, this show is not for me. And then I watched the first episode of season two and I'm like, this show is awesome. So. So the reason I gave this episode a 10 is because I thought we had so much Star Trek. We had biological transporters. We had the mycelial plane. We had this like really cool explanation for bringing back Dr. Culver. We had, even though it's not like, you know,
01:38:55
Speaker
The whole episode was balanced out, even though Section 31 stuff wasn't as strong, it was still really cool and interesting, and I know it's gonna pay off when we get the Section 31 show. I liked seeing Admiral Cornwall, I liked that whole exchange. Everything to me just clicked, and it just feels, this season feels like Star Trek, whereas my biggest complaint was last season didn't feel like Star Trek. So I'm kind of giving these tens for the first five episodes, if you will.
01:39:23
Speaker
You know, it's just like everything's just like coming together really nicely for me. So whoever wants to go next, give your rating. And if you want to give a closing statement, that'd be cool. I have a feeling that the next episode is going to be rated for Starfleet boy. I think I can predict the ratings for the rest of the season, but I don't know. We don't know. I don't know. I may not love the next. Who knows? I'm open to not having another 10, but discoveries on a role.
01:39:55
Speaker
The rating though, should it be from like an objective standpoint, if I'm just like rating an episode of TV, or should it be more from like my personal... Yeah, we started the rating system just because like on the show, because we didn't know if we should have a rating system or not. And so we aired on the side of a rating system. If I had to do it all over again, I would not rate any episodes because
01:40:16
Speaker
I'll go next.
Section 31 Portrayal Debate
01:40:23
Speaker
It's really tough. It is very subjective. It's very in the moment. Sean says I'm in the hype right now. I don't do that on text track. I try to write on Starfleet Boy each episode based on kind of like
01:40:38
Speaker
my whole knowledge of Star Trek. Like when we read a TNG episode, I'll put Darmok very high, I'll put the Inner Light very high. And so objectively, I can't put this episode that high because it ain't no Inner Light, right? Sean has a continuity. He has a continuity for his ratings.
01:40:55
Speaker
I don't. I try to make, I try to have the ratings make sense, you know, together. Yeah. This guy just gives everything tins. So here, okay. So here, I actually like the, sorry, not to interrupt you, Fathery, but you're good. I actually like the, the scale that, that Sean came up with. And even though we're only going to use it on drunk space nine, just to give you an idea, Sean, it was to me, this episode was great. That's not a 10 out of 10.
01:41:23
Speaker
It is because it's a 10 out of 11 technically. It's a 10 out of 11 so it actually works. It's an 11 point scale on his on his thing. Okay well I know what I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna give it a 6.047 out of 10.
01:41:46
Speaker
Nice Any any closing thoughts about this episode my closing thoughts is that I think it's a good episode. It's a fine product of modern TV
01:41:57
Speaker
But as a long time Star Trek fan and a bit of a continuity snob, it kind of did run me the wrong way to how they're using Section 31. I always say that I'm fine with changing something in Star Trek as long as you change it to the better, then I'll learn to accept it, I'll get over it. But I don't really, I don't like the more
01:42:20
Speaker
out in the open section 31 as much as the more secretive, mysterious section 31. And I'm still not 100% sure what's going on with the support drive in the Mycelial network. And I do kind of have issues with just killing a character and then conveniently resurrecting them. I'm happy for the characters, but I don't feel like that is
01:42:42
Speaker
the best writing. I overall had a positive reaction to the episode, but because of these issues I'm having, it's only going to be a 6.047 out of 10. Excellent. I would also give it a 6. What's just a 6? I like the Cobra stuff. I don't mind how convoluted that kind of is. He transferred his essence over into the Mycelium network when he was
01:43:12
Speaker
you know, phasing in and out. I'm glad they kind of tied that all together, the stuff with the references to the USS Glenn and, you know, I still like Pike, I like Leland. I don't like Georgiou and I don't like how this May thing and how they explain the science of the Masele network. It just didn't, it seemed like a bit magic, but I did buy the whole Culber returning thing, so.
01:43:42
Speaker
I want to see if there are any consequences to him coming back now. I hope so. I hope so too. I'd give it a six as well. Wow! It's a pretty alright episode.
01:43:56
Speaker
It's a little mark of the beast. Yeah. You saved it with the .047. So we're not going to open a portal to hell. You have to go in there and rescue our doctor friend from the mushroom people. I think you guys pretty much said everything that needs to be said about the episode. So do we have a, do we have an average that's totally skewed because of the 10 out of 10?
01:44:27
Speaker
Well, I think three strong, I think three strong sixes actually pull it down. So if you guys are okay, I say seven for the whole. Yeah, seems fair.
01:44:39
Speaker
Is that okay? So Starfleet Boy ranking or rating for this episode is a seven. I think that's pretty solid actually when you think about it, not bad. Good solid TV, damn fine cup of coffee right here. That's right. Anyways, guys, this was a real joy. We went on for like quite a while discussing and having, it was fun as well.
01:45:02
Speaker
Jake, you guys coming on? Audience, please comment in the, you can't see me making the gestures, so if you guys will point down for me. Please, thank you. Please click below, subscribe, and hit the little bell so you get, so you get it.
01:45:22
Speaker
for three-hour episodes. And then also let us know what your thoughts are. I'd love to get into discussions on the YouTube as well. Also, please listen to our podcasts and also visit the YouTube channels and websites of these three fine gentlemen who came to join me today in this discussion. So you can go to text-trek, right? Tom? Yeah, that's my website. For fathering?
01:45:49
Speaker
Anything you want to promote anything you want to let the audience know to go look at a video your recent video or anything like that Yeah, we have a podcast on Star Trek discovery available every Sunday in both audio only formats as well as videos on YouTube and Be sure to follow us on Facebook and follow me on Twitter at TX true. I'm not following you on Facebook. I'm gonna do that today Yeah, I actually have like
01:46:17
Speaker
So many more Facebook followers than anything else. I have like 1,300 Facebook followers. Oh, right on.
01:46:24
Speaker
I don't know why, but now you have 1301. Well, I appreciate that. Um, and PJ, you could go to PJ's channel and check out his videos. I'm really happy that you're doing more videos, dude. Thank you. Yeah, you've been doing the live. I haven't tuned in. Like sometimes I'm like at work when they come on, but still I think I get the notifications and it's exciting.
01:46:50
Speaker
I did do one video recently about how I'm disappointed that we're not going to see the Enterprise Bridge. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, guys, if I'm keeping you from anything. But can we talk about that? Is that true? Or like, what is that room? What is going on with that? I've heard conflicting reports on that. But according to the set designer lady, I can't remember her name. PJ, do you remember her name? Samara Devereaux.
01:47:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. She, she said that she did not get the opportunity to build the enterprise bridge and that she, she wished that she could cause she said she would have drawn a lot from the look of the original series. Drawn a lot from, what do you mean? As in not do it right. Oh, she also said that with Spock's quarters, she said that she, she wanted to like rebuild something that looked more like the original series, but they didn't have the time.
01:47:41
Speaker
And she was like, we have the money, but we didn't have the time. So I had to re-drive the Discovery set. God. Yeah. If she was going to build the Enterprise bridge, she wanted to make it look more like TOS. I think that's just the line that she's saying, like, I could have, and then it wouldn't have looked like it. I don't know. We all thought we were going to decibels here. And it was like, look, it's TOS. It's great. Yeah. Well, the transition between.
01:48:10
Speaker
Truckyards reported that they did build it and that we'll see it at the end of the season. There's confusion because the set photographer for Discovery put a picture on Instagram where he's with Alex Kurtzman and he says, here on the Enterprise set build. And everybody took that as, oh, that's confirmation that it's being built. Well, maybe he was just misspeaking. Maybe it was the Section 31 ship and just he didn't know the difference.
01:48:38
Speaker
Do you guys, do you guys think it's actually a wise decision that they're not really showing the enterprise that we don't really get to see these things like in a way kind of thing in this season anyway. So yeah, if they're not going to do it right, then don't do it at all. Yeah, which is kind of how I feel about discovery.
01:48:56
Speaker
the show. Okay, we're gonna we're out of the nitpick corner. I feel like they should maybe restrain like from from
01:49:09
Speaker
doing more and more things that we know, like that we've already seen, we already know. Like you've given us Pike and Spock and number one, and that's okay to give us more of Pike and more of number one because we don't know them too much. Don't go too far out with the Spock and don't go too far out with, but then characters, I suppose, can evolve and change and grow. But then when you're dealing with Tick, just limit yourselves to what damage you've already done and maybe not go too far.
01:49:38
Speaker
I hope they do Talothians right. I think they'll find Spock on Talos IV for some reason. Oh, wow. Fascinating. Neat theory. Anyways, PJ's channel, and then where else can we follow you? Anything? You can follow me on Twitter at PJ's channel one. And any point the audience to? Yeah.
01:50:02
Speaker
Okay. And then finally we have Sean from Trek on the Tube. Trek on the Tube and you can go to his probably on Monday maybe but definitely by Tuesday he'll have his review for this episode. Say that. Probably not Monday, hopefully Tuesday, most likely Wednesday.
01:50:32
Speaker
Can I just remind your audience, is this going to be up today? Like, is this going to be online today? Yes. Okay. So, Kett Walsky is putting out a video responding to Midnight Edge's, you know, claims about the rights behind Discovery.
Promotions and Upcoming Content
01:50:49
Speaker
And I'm really looking forward to that. So, just keep an eye out for that. I have seen it. Amazing. All right. And that's tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern. Right? I think so, yeah.
01:50:59
Speaker
Okay, cool. Excellent. Yeah. Nice promo. Check that out. Yeah. And while we're at it, yeah. And while we're at it, we may as well mention our absent friends. So go check out Katwalski's channel, the real Katwalski. And also check out Trekker Prize, who's responsible for our beautiful channel graphics. And then also check out Trek Book Club, Trekky Rob.
01:51:25
Speaker
So those are the Starfleet, boy. That's the bridge crew, I guess. So I give you guys a bridge salute today. Thank you for joining me. Live long and prosper, and we'll see you next time. Would you guys do the salute since I can't? Do we have to stand up and clap? No, you can do a bridge clap. No, you don't have to. All right.