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Star Trek Discovery Discussion: An Obal for Charon
40 Plays2 years ago
A spectacular discussion about Star Trek Discovery Season 2 Episode 4, "An Obal for Charon" with the Starfleet Boy Gang this week being: GUESTS: Sean: http://www.youtube.com/trekonthetube Fatheree: http://www.tex-trek.com Gary: http://www.trekkerprise.com
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Transcript
Humorous Beginnings and Podcast Platforms
00:00:01
Speaker
too late. The process has begun. It's too late. Okay. It's gone. Okay. It's done. We're back. It says live on the screen. So that's why I always say live, but I just want to like beat you to this. I've been lying all this time. This is not a lie. I feel so betrayed and deceived right now.
00:00:20
Speaker
but we are recording officially at this moment and so uh welcome welcome welcome uh fathery uh you need no introduction how do you i will tell you father is from text
00:00:38
Speaker
This video, pause it the magic of YouTube or pause your podcast and pull over to the side of the road and then put on text track right now and watch it or listen to it.
Nostalgia and Technology
00:00:52
Speaker
And that's it. You options you can do either. And you're on iTunes too, right? No, I'm not. I'm not doing iTunes because no one no one is listening to iTunes anymore.
00:01:09
Speaker
No one? It's not like it used to be. Fine. I'm no one. Surely there must be at least one person listening to iTunes. So Hale. Yes. Starfleet Boiler starts. He's the only person keeping the platform alive. Well, I'm sure Apple would really appreciate that.
00:01:31
Speaker
Um, fun fact, I was in an Apple iPhone commercial, uh, for the iPhone five C. So you actually probably, if you ever saw that commercial, you saw me in your subconscious before you ever, uh, That's amazing. You need to send me the link to that. Yeah, I'll send it to you. You'll be like, oh my God. I need to see that. Wow. The iPhone five. iPhone five C, the colorful ones, the ones that were like different colors. It's like so old. It's like what, three years ago? I'm so old. No, that's.
00:02:01
Speaker
That was like at least 10 years ago actually. No, nine years ago now. Oh, Gato needs to go outside. Hang on a second. Now that was not professional. That's not professional at all. This is your own podcast. You're walking out the door. You're not from the mic. Lying to people about it being long. Lying to people. This is terrible. Wow. I just feel really depressed right now. I had such a good feeling.
00:02:28
Speaker
when I was starting that we were going to stay on track. And we're totally not even talking about it. We didn't make it very far, did we? We didn't make it very far, do we? All right, so we're here to talk about. Do we need an official long introduction to take a strike?
Star Trek Stories and Cross-Promotion
00:02:45
Speaker
yes but that could come in the discussion we can do an official short introduction that might be easy actually and then we didn't really get too much of uh pj's story so if he comes on today we'll have to get his story on too so this could be a long
00:03:02
Speaker
just your Star Trek story. We like to hear it. Oh, do you want to hear my Star Trek story? Did I do this? Space Nine. You did. That's what I'm saying. Like, it's kind of weird. Yeah, you should just listen to that when I was. I see. So we're promoting the other show.
00:03:19
Speaker
Fatherly is a cross promotion. Cross platform promotion. That's the name of the game. And non-linear. This is the big crossover event of the Starfleet Boy Cinematic Universe. This is Avengers Assemble. Oh my goodness, I'm just gonna hide over here. Directed by Joss Whedon. There we go. I'm gone. What's up with, is that like a Pokemon hat?
00:03:45
Speaker
It is a fox, okay, a fox hat. And it's like in my headcanon, it's a species that is a member of the Federation and they wear their insignias on their little headbands. That doesn't follow regulation.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'm I'm in the discovery universe so I can do whatever I want. I have no regulation. You know, Brian Fuller originally wanted a tardy grade Starfleet officer on this. Yeah, that's completely that would have a Starfleet insignia like as like a necklace or like a necklace like like hanging from its neck and
Star Trek Discovery and the Tardigrade Controversy
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, I would just be the stupidest thing ever. Did anyone ever render that or Photoshop it? I'm going to look it up while you guys talk about it. Look, I have nothing against Brian Fuller, and I do not know what happened behind the scenes, but just based off what I know of what he brought to the show, as in the way the Klingons were, the whole idea about the Tardigrade being a crew member, I'm quite happy that he's
00:04:54
Speaker
not associated with the show as of now. I'll say this, maybe he had a plan that would have made all of that stuff work. I don't think so because Aaron Harvitz and Gretchen J. Berg were like his sidekicks and they didn't follow through with any of that plan. Do you guys, I have a question since I actually like listen to both of you for Star Trek information.
00:05:22
Speaker
but uh is there like a direct link to this tardy grade game and like discovery other than the obvious like coincidences like is there something to talk about that oh we can't talk about that i mean we can if y'all want to but
00:05:37
Speaker
Just if you could answer real quickly, is there a direct link? Is there a direct link? Did Brian Fuller play the game? I think it's up to you to decide whether there's a link or not. I think that's how it is. Yeah, the evidence is out there. Just look into it. Look at the clips of the game. Look at how that stuff came out. Formulate your own opinion and move on. I just think of it like, remember A Bug's Life and Ants came out at the same time?
00:06:03
Speaker
or de-compact in Armageddon. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I was thinking about it. But oh, well. OK, so I have a tendency of doing that. They have a tendency in like the wild, I think it was. And Madagascar came out the same year as well.
00:06:20
Speaker
Well, you got to think that Tardigrades kind of entered the scientific pop-cultural landscape. Yeah, not too long ago. Right. So you would think, OK, in the next few years, I propose Cosmos was the first time Tardigrades came into the mainstream.
00:06:36
Speaker
The new one with Neil deGrasse Tyson. A new concept
Space Elevator Feasibility and Sci-Fi Critiques
00:06:40
Speaker
like that introduced. You got to think, OK, in the next few years, we'll probably see some people, you know, trying to use this in entertainment and media and stuff. It's kind of like how in the 90s everyone thought that it would be possible to build a friggin lift like an elevator that went from like on Earth to like orbit. And so everyone started putting that in sci-fi. But it's just a stupid idea. Everyone realized it was done. It would never work. And now in sci-fi, you never see it anymore.
00:07:06
Speaker
But you saw it on Voyager. You saw it on Voyager in the 90s. The space elevator is a real NASA project, actually. I don't believe you. It's a stupid idea. No, I 100% promise you that a space elevator was viable. They were looking at viable ways. Most buildings fall down. You want to build an elevator? Come on.
00:07:28
Speaker
So it's anchor part of its anchored out in space, right? So it's stiffens or whatever. And then we're going to use carbon carbon fiber. What do you think the speed of the elevator is? What do you think? It's like super slow. It's super slow. But what the reason they were, if I recall correctly,
00:07:47
Speaker
Is that right? You actually know that? That thing's called an ass, but your typical elevator ain't going to go that quickly. Well, a typical elevator won't be like run by Neelix, will it? Even if the space elevator took a day, a day to get to space, like you could just put cargo
Star Trek Discovery Season 2: Plot and Characters
00:08:02
Speaker
on there and not worry about it. That could be its purpose. It's like low risk space.
00:08:10
Speaker
stuff anyways uh so we're here to talk about star trek discovery season two episode four we're actually gonna talk about star trek episode four and oval for caron which i believe is the correct way to say it i'm not sure is it sharon is it it's either sharon like overpronounced like that or caron but i i can't remember from uh humanities class which which pronunciation was correct i've heard this is old greek mythology in it
00:08:39
Speaker
How did they say it in the mirror universe? Because that was the name of the emperor power. That's right. USS, I don't know, I forgot. Charon, didn't they say Charon? I think it was Charon. I need these discussions before I do my video.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. Someone else could do all the grunt work and learn how to say the words. That's it. That's it. It's a casual and informal conversation. That's the best thing ever. Anyway, so we're here to talk about this episode, which I am happy to give the summary, but I always offer the summary to our guests. So Fathery or Sean, would you like to do the summary for this episode?
00:09:21
Speaker
I did just summarize it last night when I recorded my podcast for this episode. So now that you've returned from the summary audience
00:09:44
Speaker
Hopefully, it was great. I haven't heard it yet. But I will have heard it by the time you see this video, which is fascinating. Anyways, where were we? Oh, yes. No, we did that already. Oh, my bad.
00:10:00
Speaker
The audience paused the video, went and listened to the summary on Textrag, and then came back. But if I had to do a really quick kind of reactionary summary, which is something new on Starfleet Boy, because we're trying new things today, it's just, holy shit, wow, this was an amazing episode. And I'm kind of giving away my rating. I know we saved them for the end. It's super professional. But I really enjoyed the hell out of this episode. It was fantastic.
00:10:30
Speaker
the heck. That's all. That's the summary reaction. So the summary was you really enjoyed the hell out of it. Yeah.
00:10:40
Speaker
If you want to do a one line summary, it's one of those, a traditional trick trope of like a space being or anomaly, or we don't know what an unknown
Discovery's Production Quality and Klingon Portrayals
00:10:53
Speaker
object kind of stops the ship in its tracks. And then we have like the whole intrigue of discovering what it is, what it wants, can we escape from it and etc.
00:11:02
Speaker
And then the modern serialized format also throws in a couple other plot lines. And we continue on with the Tilly slash SporeDrive plot line. I only saw the episode once this week was a rough week for Starfleet boys. Very tired. I took notes.
00:11:28
Speaker
I tried to watch it this morning, and I took notes from my mind. And the things that I remembered were, number one was awesome. What did you guys think of that scene? Number one was awesome. I really love number one. And I really love Rebecca Romain. So if we could see more of her, I'd be down for that. But they did a good job of kind of reinventing the character that we only see one time in the cage.
00:11:57
Speaker
I love that they threw in just a little character detail where, oh yeah, she likes hot sauce on her burger fries. It reminded me of stuff Michael Pillar would do on The Next Generation to try to like flesh out the TNG characters, what people call the pillar filler. It's like those little character moments, makes people feel more real.
00:12:14
Speaker
I like that. I never heard that before. Yeah, and you get the impression that her and Pike, you know, just in that one little conversation they have, it really sold. Yeah, these are two colleagues that have been working together. They have a good working relationship. Yeah, I agree. I'm not so I wasn't convinced by the casting originally, because I do I do think she's an amazing actor, but she just doesn't resemble
00:12:40
Speaker
Majel Barrett. I find and so I'm still I agree with my with my own assessment. She doesn't resemble her at all. But I noticed they did like a huge, like a good job with the makeup.
00:12:54
Speaker
They really, they really put like an original series style makeup on her to make her look like, well, the character as she was presented to us in the cage, right? That's one of the most impressive things I think, what's really, what do you call it? The hype that I'm in? I'm in a hype place right now. Like, I'm just like caught in the,
00:13:12
Speaker
in the moment. But that's one thing that I've noticed this season is that like the production value is just it just seems so much more focused maybe or like just better in general and I think that's really what's like exciting me the most is that like I'm starting to see like in a future kind of
00:13:34
Speaker
episode somehow like this merging with TOS. I have no idea what that's gonna look like. I'm not that imaginative. I could come up with things but I don't know if they're like sensible but I just see that the show is like making an effort to line up as they said or stated that they would do at some point we're gonna all be like oh yeah it lines up perfectly with TOS. I don't know how that's gonna happen. They are they're clearly trying to do that.
Creative Dynamics on Discovery
00:14:00
Speaker
If they succeed or not I don't know but
00:14:02
Speaker
Right. That's yet to be determined. I think the problem is for the moment, like what we would have all loved is like every everyone would have accepted that it's different and it's going to gradually move towards the original series aesthetic. But what it does feel like is it does feel like course correction. Well, I mean, for me, it feels like they they went completely off the rails and they like now they kind of backtracking on like how whack they went.
00:14:27
Speaker
Um, it doesn't feel like they originally planned to have it like this weird and then gradually bring it back. That's my, like the clean ons being an example of that. I felt like that just went completely like they went crazy with the clean ons and now they kind of tweaking it back. It doesn't feel like they're actually integrating them.
00:14:47
Speaker
I'm willing to excuse a lot of my qualms only because I was made aware of all the controversies behind Brian Fuller and the shake-ups. It does look like a show that doesn't have a clear focus or direction.
00:15:10
Speaker
It's getting so much better. It's like night and day, I feel like, from season one to season two. I feel like the show does have a lot more clarity, a lot more focus, and it's definitely headed in a Star Trek direction, if you will. It is very chaos on the bridge, isn't it? Because this is exactly the same thing you have in TNG. TNG season one and two was absolute chaos. The documentary shows you that. It was all over the show. They had so many writers, and this is the same situation. Well, a similar situation.
00:15:38
Speaker
It is, but I think it's clear to see the show has benefited from a more stable year going from season one to season two. Kurtzman has a vision, right? I know that not everyone agrees with him, but he seems at least focused on what he's doing.
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think he's the greatest writer, given just some of his stuff he's worked on before. But I think as long as he has a good staff, a good team of writers, then I think the discovery will be fine. I think he doesn't even need to write, to be honest. If he puts himself in a show in a position where he's the one overseeing all of these different shows, I think you have just set up main people. You have Erica Lippold,
00:16:20
Speaker
And I forgot what she can, but we can't working on section 31 have my man working on lower decks and like have all of these different people working on supervise them, right?
Fan Community and Social Media
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we're doing. And did Berman did that when he had, you know, Ira Stephen bear running DS nine at the same time, Brandon Braga was running Voyager. Yeah, it makes room for more writers, Sean.
00:16:47
Speaker
It does. I think there's enough executive producers because there's like 21 of them. But every writer from season one who stayed on the show got promoted to produce there. Yeah, I know. It's like the work producer comes out so much.
00:17:01
Speaker
If I had money, I would definitely be investing it in Star Trek right now in terms of where it could pay me back big time because I do think that despite whatever people think of Star Trek Discovery, all these other shows that are being born from it, there's so much excitement. I've never seen this level of excitement just around Star Trek in general. I know I'm focused on it, but when I go to Twitter, it seems like there's politics and then there's Star Trek.
00:17:27
Speaker
To be honest, that's probably just what you're following, to be honest. We also didn't have Twitter. Show me reality, Twitter. I don't want to see this. There is no Twitter, you know, 25 years ago when they had two Trek shows on, we're making movies and then we're starting the next show with Voyager.
00:17:52
Speaker
That was a very nice post, Sean. Thank you. On the Twitter where you're like, I found friends. I got some friends. Well, I did. I know. Context. Context for people that are listening to it. Someone was asking if like someone said that they could see stuff like fans uniting and doing meet and greets and whatever.
00:18:16
Speaker
just like they used to do in the 90s. And someone said, well, that's not really going to happen because it's all about social media. So I said, well, I found the best of both worlds because now I have a bunch of friends on social media and we all talk to each other all the time. And we disagree. We do. A lot. I disagree with your exaggerated ratings. Is this going to be a 10 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10?
Star Trek Canon and Continuity Debates
00:18:40
Speaker
You know it's going to be a 10 out of 10, right?
00:18:44
Speaker
audience. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do in these two finale is going to be mind blowing and you're going to have to give it like an 11. Right.
00:18:52
Speaker
Well, kind of like how the warp scale is only supposed to go to 10, but then sometimes... Oh, he'll just... Yeah, he'll just be more 12. Sean has placed a restriction of warp 9.999. He's the official title of co-host. He's been on just enough that I have to. You've been on it. I am so obsessed with not accepting 10s that even the... Like, if I were the current showrunner of all of Star Trek, I would remove
00:19:20
Speaker
the episode where Tom Paris goes warp 10 from Canon. I would say that one episode must be removed from Canon because I disapprove of the idea of going like warp 10 and I don't like the fact that humans evolve into whatever they are.
00:19:36
Speaker
What about in all good things when Admiral Riker orders the Enterprise to go at warp 13? That's right. He does that. It's true. But is that the old scale? No, no, because the new scale was established with TNG. So warp 9.9999 was like the theoretical
00:19:55
Speaker
warp limit and it was like super fast like if you were at warp 9.999999 you're like going solar systems you know like in seconds right or something like that it's crazy okay I can excuse someone that says warp for example warp 13 in the sense that like they're using a different scale or it's just like an expression or whatever but I can't excuse the like the visual representation of what happens to you when you go warped in and the fact that we misunderstood the concept of evolution we don't like
00:20:25
Speaker
Anyway, well, no, yeah, there's one of the worst episodes. I don't think I remember. I just have seen them. You don't remember. I remember vaguely. I remember vaguely the the scene, you know, where they've devolved or whatever into the into the catfish people.
00:20:52
Speaker
No disrespect to those who wrote it though. I mean, that's the thing. If I would have just objectively rate the episode, it probably wouldn't, it wouldn't be like a two
Section 31's Role in Discovery
00:21:01
Speaker
or a one or something. It would have a, I suppose an average rating because on its own, it's still an episode that's watchable. The people act well, to be honest, like that. It's, it all looks good. It's just that in the general Star Trek story, it makes no fucking sense.
00:21:17
Speaker
What did you guys think of the kind of moment between number one and Captain Pike regarding the holograms? I loved it.
00:21:29
Speaker
I do like that they're interested in that, but it's not as good as the idea I came up with for how to get rid of the holograms. Can you remind us what it was, please? So my idea was to say that the holograms are not very secure and that people might be spying to your communications. So which happens on FaceTime now, apparently. You guys, I don't know.
00:21:55
Speaker
You know the previous episode before this we had a moment where Pike was talking to Captain Vella of Starbase 5 and They sound like they're kind of talking about section 31 in there a little bit when Captain Vella says, you know, there's people coming after Spock and
00:22:13
Speaker
I think it could be cool if pike pike kind of knows about section 31 he's kind of heard of this shadow group that might be around and that's why he likes to talk on the screens because he knows that the holographic stuff isn't secure they might be listening to it he knows section 31 though
00:22:31
Speaker
But then, from what I gather, Section 31 isn't yet a rogue operation at this point. They're kind of just a division of Starfleet. Yeah. I'm willing to give them time to explain that. Just like I gave them time to explain the spore drive and all the other weird stuff Discovery does. But how? I think them going rogue would explain why they're never mentioned in TOS. But you still have like Cisco is like, I've never heard of this. There's no record of it in DS9.
00:22:58
Speaker
How cool would this be if you had a moment where we're Captain Pike is like oh my god section 31 is listening to this and you know he runs over to Burnham who's like talking to Sarik on the hologram or something he's like turn this off shut this down and like he runs onto the bridge and you have like Detmer and a Wasekin are looking at this holographic star chart like like trying to plan out their course he's like no like turn this off they can monitor all these holograms kill the power to all the holograms
00:23:25
Speaker
You have like Tilly is in like her room, like brushing her hair from a holographic mirror and like that shuts down. All the holograms are shut down because people can monitor those. And that would explain it. They'd be like, oh yeah, this is why people stop using holograms. I can explain holo communications.
Kelpian Culture and Saru's Evolution
00:23:40
Speaker
It can't explain like the copious amount of candles.
00:23:44
Speaker
I think that Nemesis can be like an interesting connection to all this holography stuff because the technology that Shinzon is using could be like a re- like whatever for whatever reason the technology was abandoned and then it's re-brought up by the Romulans acquire it and then they're and then they start using it.
00:24:09
Speaker
So it's kind of an interesting idea. In season five, a little bit. The marquee thing, yeah. They only do it for like three episodes, then they drop it. And they were confined, right, to like a platform or something like that. So there's a moment where they talk to holograms on the Defiant, and it's clearly marked like he's in this kind of zone where the guy can only speak in the zone, but then they do it on the space station, I think. At one point, one guy appears. It's never explicitly mentioned that he's a hologram, but he has this weird blue lighting on him.
00:24:39
Speaker
This is an episode you just watched with your wife that you tweeted about with Bashir, where we learned spoilers for the S9. He's medically enhanced. What? He's supposedly a hologram, right? That was the intent. He's not just standing there under two lights. Like that ad moment that goes up. Just standing there in a corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's supposed to be a hologram. OK. Because it was never addressed. I think that's the last time they do it. I think they drop it after that episode. OK.
00:25:09
Speaker
They use the hologram just for Eddington, essentially. Yeah, and then this weird admiral that showed up one time to explain why genetic engineering is bad. Con.
00:25:24
Speaker
One time we had this guy named Paul Stamets who tried to insert tardigrade DNA in himself and we all know how that ended up. So go ahead and be like that. It doesn't mention Stamets, it just mentions Con. I also like that they addressed all the implants and like kind of like the bio
00:25:42
Speaker
technology as being like an exception that was made during the war and you could tell like in Detmer's case maybe she had some kind of injury and like that's actually kind of like helping her to see as well as being in head. I have no problem with Detmer. I don't think she's enhanced. I think she's just like um kind of as you say repaired or killed. She had a problem and they fixed it and that's fine. She's not enhanced. I have a problem with Gary.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah, they are the same thing. That's right. But then you can see that that's like an outdated visor or like an older version because it's huge. It takes up half his head. He needs to be bold for it to function, whatever. But Arium is just that's that's a little too. Well, we don't know what her deal like. We don't know. Maybe she was a human. They got like rebuilt by some ancient alien. Her deal is she looked cool. That's why they put her in there. Well, yeah, that looks awesome. Let's just use it. But in the comment on a date with Arium.
Tilly's SporeDrive and Mythical Comparisons
00:26:40
Speaker
Who are you asking? Both of you. Areum or the actresses who have played Areum? Yeah, because like... The character. Well, the character. No, because every time she moves, it makes like the weird like robot like... I know. I know you can hear her. She takes over the bridge, right? All right. All right. All right. Come on. Can we put you on silent? What if it's that easy?
00:27:09
Speaker
like in it like she's inconsiderate for not doing that just like Linus needs it on people yeah I'm sorry okay okay I will say that they did course correct Linus a little bit in this episode it was it was all right he wasn't he wasn't he was neither a good neither a bad character in this episode he was just present
00:27:26
Speaker
But I'm still greatly angered by the scene where he sneezes. I got an explanation for it because this is what I do. I come up with ways to explain the shoddy writing on Star Trek. I've been doing it all my life. What if Sarians rarely ever get sick? And like he's never sneezed before, so he didn't know the protocol. He's got like what, six nasal whatever it is? Yeah. So he gets sick, trust me. You know, he gets sick.
00:27:57
Speaker
No, because they have a very sterilized planet. So they never catch colds. They don't have any allergens. It's only like when you leave the Sarian world and go into Starfleet that you might sneeze. So as you notice, this Sarian brandy. Yes.
00:28:13
Speaker
I know, I wouldn't ask that question. The sarin brandy is the snot. It ages and it becomes... They just sneeze into that weird shaped bottle from the original series. And then it becomes sarin. That's why it's shaped like that so like the snot can like run out of their nostril into the bottle. Disgusting! When you have like McCoy and Kirk like, damn it Jim, this is some fine brandy.
00:28:39
Speaker
This is Linus creeping around. Is he like his head? Poke around the corner.
00:28:46
Speaker
Oh my goodness. That's a plot for a lower disc right there. Gentlemen, get off my bridge. With that language. So about correcting writing and everything like that, don't you think that the way this episode played out was pretty brilliant in terms of how Saru was getting sick ahead of time? There was all these clues and then
00:29:15
Speaker
that I didn't expect that it would be the empathy thing and all that stuff. It was very cool. And then I am not often fooled by episodes. And I thought that they were going to kill Saru.
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah, that was heavily influenced by like my knowledge of Doug Jones in the real world because he was supposed to be in What We Do in the Shadows, the American remake of Taika's movie, right? And he apparently isn't associated with that project anymore. So he's no longer being a vampire. And I thought, okay, so he's dropped out of that. He's also got no movie slated.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I was like, wait a minute, he's doing no movies, and he dropped out of this TV show, and now they're killing Saru, so I thought, they're gonna kill him, I believe it.
Exploration Themes and Knowledge Transfer
00:30:01
Speaker
And they played it right till the very end, and I was fooled, they didn't kill him. But I really did, I don't know, I thought it was gonna happen. At first, I was like, there's no way he's gonna die. You know, when they showed in the trailers, when you do see him sick, when he's laying there with like no shirt on, and Burnham's like, oh, you're like family to me or whatever.
00:30:21
Speaker
But then when I was watching the episode, they draw it out so long. It made me think, well, you know, in season one, they did kill people. We lost Lorca and...
00:30:31
Speaker
What was Ricka Shorma's character? Landry. Landry, and I was like, they do murder people. I don't know. And then I remember in the trailers, we see his sister there. I was like, what if they go to the Kelpian world and they pick up the sister and replace Saru? What if he is going to die? It could happen. And I don't get tricked often either. But yeah, they did a good job drawing that out and making me worried about
00:30:59
Speaker
One of the best characters on the show dying. It's comforting to know that I wasn't the only one because I am not often tricked by this kind of thing. And it's comforting to know that you aren't either and that you were tricked as well. So props to them. I suppose they did a good job on that. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean is comforted.
00:31:17
Speaker
I'll tell you what, I still disagree with Saru's whole thing about general order one. He's all like, now that we know that our people have been lied to, we can general order one doesn't apply. How does that logic work? It's not because now you feel even more sorry for your species that
00:31:33
Speaker
the Prime Directive shouldn't be applied. I agree that the situation is more sad. It's even more saddening now that you know that, but then Prime Directive still applies, right? Or should. Well, breaking the Prime Directive is a big theme in Star Trek, so I would be disappointed if you don't see them.
00:31:52
Speaker
He needs to go break the Prime Directive at this point. Here's a thought from my wife while we're watching the episode. She says, oh my god. So Kelpians can actually pretty much evolve from further to what they are. She said, what if the Ba'ul are just other Kelpians but that have lost their fear? Oh, they're cannibals. And so that's what my wife said there. And I just looked at her and said, my god, it's amazing. That is dark. That is dark. But it's awesome. It's so dark. It is awesome. Yeah, it's true.
00:32:21
Speaker
Or what if they turn into Red Angels with their gingula fall off? Okay, so Saru's gonna like... The Red Angel is Captain Kirk played by William Shatner. We already have a saddle part. Oh, come on. On Starflipoy that at the end when the Red Angel appears, it'll dissipate and then Captain Kirk... It's exactly the same shape, isn't it?
00:32:43
Speaker
It is. It's no work though. I've met Shatner twice. He was an asshole both times. He doesn't look like a real angel. No! No! I don't believe it. He's an asshole on Twitter to be honest.
00:32:56
Speaker
Say it ain't so. No. I mean, I still like the guy, but I think he's misunderstood. Okay, I need him to do an intro. He's Canadian. What if all the angryness and meanness of Canadians just all go into William Shatner and that's what he is? He's the one mean Canadian. Oh my God, he's the, what's he called? Amis? No, what?
Character Dynamics and Future Plot Speculations
00:33:20
Speaker
Yes, he's the armist? He's the armist of Canada. Skin of evil.
00:33:29
Speaker
He's Armist of Canada. That's brilliant. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they purged all of their angry emotions into this one blob that became William Shatner. Oh my gosh. Okay. Shatner, if you're listening to this, please, we love you. We love you. Something bugged me in this episode.
00:33:54
Speaker
And I understand that they don't have main engineering, like the set built, and that they don't have actors to play the main engineer and other engineers. But it's pretty specifically, it's explicitly explained that Reno goes, she comes from main engineering to this part of it, like this other engineering room.
00:34:14
Speaker
where Tilly and Stamets are doing their thing, right? She's coming to help them. And then when Burnham leaves the bridge, she says, I'm going to engineering. She goes to that room and it annoys me because why are you going to this room where Stamets is a farmer, as explained by Reno. Reno is just like, she's just a random chick at some point and Tilly shouldn't even be there. Why are you going to this room where you could be going to like managerial with the chief engineer? He's the one that's going to fix things or she's the one that's going to fix things.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, they've called the set engineering a couple of times this season, which is weird because in season one, they at one point refer to it as engineering test bay alpha. But then they did refer to STEM as chief engineer as well. Yeah, but then Ted Sullivan explained that. Chief engineer, all of the spore drive or whatever it is. Yeah, that was his solution to that.
00:35:05
Speaker
Wait, what was the explanation? Sorry. Stamets is the chief engineer of the spore drive. And that's why one of the computer screens displayed his name. It said like Paul Stamets, chief engineer.
00:35:15
Speaker
Right. OK, that makes sense. Because the people were like, well, what's going on with that? And Ted Sullivan tweeted like, no, no, no, no, no. We meant that he is chief engineer of the SporeDrive. Yeah, OK. They throw out some kind of number of how many experiments can happen on Discovery at any given moment. It was something like 300. 300 and something. So I can only imagine that there's a ton of different labs all over the ship. And so that's probably what the majority of the sets would be, is a lab of some kind.
00:35:44
Speaker
in my mind. But then they should have a main engine.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, call it a lab, call it like the spore lab or whatever. But also, it's weird because they did put the technically they they did put the warp engine in that. Right. It's fiction as well. It's fine. It looks like they reimagined the toss the original series engineering and they put it in there. It's weird. Toss. Toss. Toss. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm confused by the whole engineering. I think they don't they should have done a
00:36:18
Speaker
a layout of their ship and like really organize what they wanted, what they wanted to build, what they didn't want to build. I was really impressed at how many stories there were in this episode that kind of flowed pretty smoothly. Like, you know, at times there were a little bit of like, oh, wait, am I following this correctly? But they had the whole, we still obviously are doing the chase, the search for Spock continues.
00:36:43
Speaker
In this episode and but I didn't understand his shuttles coming for he escaped from the Starbase They have his warp signature Why is the discovery the only ship in range is it because the Enterprise is broken and that's the only other ship in the sector or something like that?
00:36:57
Speaker
Do you guys remember anything about that? I think that Section 31 ship that we saw last week is chasing. I think they're going to be the ones pursuing him. And Pike kind of knows about Section 31. And that's why he's so concerned by like, no, they're going to murder this guy. Like, I got to get to him first and prove he's innocent. But it might just be they're the only two ships going after him. It might be that Section 31 is aware that Spock knows something, that information that they want to keep secret or keep to themselves. So they're trying to get on.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yes, that's one thing with this show is that a lot of times I feel like I need to reserve judgment until after I see it play out because they draw things out so... Logically, a lot of the ships in Starfleet, because logically there's pretty much no more ships left because they explain that 80% of Starfleet was destroyed.
00:37:43
Speaker
So there's not many ships left. And I assume that the ones that are left are kind of out there helping the colonies and helping the planets, the members of the Federation. I would suppose that's what they're doing. And so the Constitution class ships were out doing their missions. One came back, that was Pike's ship, but then it had to be repaired. So now we're following the discovery. It's essentially the one main ship that they have currently.
00:38:12
Speaker
It'd be interesting to see if Sabotage is at work for the whole enterprise breaking down thing. It is a nice coincidence though. I'm excited to see how the whole Spock thing unfolds. I think the show's really getting me hungry to be like, what's going on? It's like- I'm not going to hype about Spock. I'm hyped about the Red Angel. I want to know what that is. I don't want it to be an Iconian.
00:38:42
Speaker
I agree that it probably will be, but I don't want it to be. I want it to be something new, something that we've never seen before. I don't know if it will be because of something that came up in this episode when they're having their little meeting early on talking about the Red Angel. Oh, she says it's never been like they've never seen anything like it. Is that it? Yeah. And then, and then Kayla Detmer says,
00:39:07
Speaker
Maybe this isn't a species. Maybe it is a creature that's kind of one of a kind. And that made me think maybe, yeah, there's only one red angel. So, which would rule out Iconians, obviously, because they were an entire race. So. Okay. Okay. Well, that's good because I really want it to be a new idea, but then I'm a complicated person because I want it to be a new idea, but then I don't want it to be too big as to like why it would never be referenced later on. I mean, the spore drive was a new idea.
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah. I'm very, very happy that my wish is coming true. They're canceling the spore drive. It's too soon though. It's fine already. It's fine. They can use it this season to go from one end of the galaxy to the other because clearly some of these red spots are in the Delta Quadrant. But I want them to get rid of it real soon. That the whole spinny thing, the spores, I don't know, I don't like it.
00:40:04
Speaker
It's a good story generator, though. You can get a lot of stories out of that. I think it renders space exploration, too. This is a quick plug for another podcast called Binge Mode, Harry Potter. Because that was relevant to the conversation. It will be. Wait. It will be. It will be. Watch.
00:40:27
Speaker
JK Rowling in Harry Potter uses a thing called the Time Turner for those of you. Does everyone here know about Harry Potter? So I am the only person in the English-speaking world that has never watched a single Harry Potter movie or read a single Harry Potter movie. Have you at least watched Fantastic Beasts 1 and 2? No, I don't watch that either. Oh, you need to watch Fantastic Beasts.
00:40:49
Speaker
Well, well anyways, in, in the book, this is spoilers in the book, she like destroys all the time turners and they asked her, why'd you do that? And she's like, well, at first I thought time travel would be like a fun thing to play with, but then it just becomes this like, like.
00:41:04
Speaker
crutch in the writing like where it's like you just use it for to get out of every situation or to like solve every problem and I think that's why the spore drive does have to go because it is kind of too magical in a sense that like you know it just and then and then of course it's never again mentioned in Star Trek so there's that obvious problem I think aside from that I think it's just too it's too magical in a way
00:41:32
Speaker
I understand your point of view, Valerie, in the sense that you would want them to keep the sport drive for the extent of the show and then say it's not viable. But then it takes away credibility that they never use it again. If it was active and used for, say, seven or eight years, rather than here, they used it for one year and they're like, God damn, it doesn't work.
00:41:55
Speaker
In the future, you're like, they tried this thing for like a year, but it never worked. But in the future, if you say they tried this thing for like seven years, maybe they were onto something, right?
00:42:05
Speaker
And it feels like that's what the May Tilly story is going to tie into, because May's species said that, like, that Stamets, basically, she identified him as the captain, because that's what she saw, I guess, through her, like, connection. Well, he was the one piloting the sport, right? Right. So that's why she thought he was the captain. We're not going to meet another captain.
00:42:27
Speaker
you know like a captain no it was like captain on an airplane not captain on a starship yeah like she went pilot pilot yeah but anyways um it looks like whatever the discovery does when it jumps it like somehow it interferes with that dimension you know or it like it like messes it up or something is the impression that i got the the mycelial network
00:42:50
Speaker
Uh, or whatever. And in the next episode scenes, they showed all these like cool where it looks like they stopped midway in a jump and then it lands like the discovery partially like merges with this other reality. You know, it's, it's going to be, they're going to break the spore drive in the next episode.
00:43:07
Speaker
or they'll just decide like we can't we definitely can't use it it's hurting a sentient species in the in the mycelial network you know kind of like a force of nature in um next generation when when they decide they can't go over warp five or five everyone goes over warp five after that anyway because they get they got better engines they they got better you know what okay old man old man picard needs to be about him on trial about that like you you didn't tell anyone he didn't file an official report he's like
00:43:37
Speaker
I'm not going to tell anyone about this. He like hit all the files and never sent anything to anyone. It's just a trial. Three seasons of a trial. Like when the cigarette companies got the report of like how cancerous cigarettes are, they're like, okay, we're just going to be silent about this.
00:43:59
Speaker
But going back to the spore drive, Stamets did say something along the lines of, you know, I can close the universe off from the mycelial network or something like that in this episode. So I'm thinking that'll be how they destroy the spore drive. Will the spore people? The Jossip, they're called. The what? Jossip.
00:44:25
Speaker
Dear God, I don't know how, I don't know. It's like, yeah, yeah. Like that. It's like J A H capital S I P. I believe it's spelled in the, in the subtitles. Okay. Memory alpha. All right. Anyway, so these guys, the, the, the small people, um,
00:44:48
Speaker
Will they actually thank Stamets maybe? Because if Stamets from Prime Timeline had never used the spore drive, then mirror Stamets would have literally destroyed all the universe because that's what they said in season one. They said that he would have destroyed all of the universe
00:45:06
Speaker
if prime standards hadn't stopped them. So not only did the USS Discovery from prime timeline have to cross over to the mirror universe, but they also had to do everything that they did to do that to actually save the entire universe. So will the spore people thank him for that? They should. Are they aware of that? I like that they're called the spore people. I know they call just steps. Just sipping on some jippers on the beach.
00:45:38
Speaker
How did you spell that? J-A-H? J-A-H-S-I-P-P. I think they didn't have a memory alpha page yesterday, but they liked it. They don't have one now. They did a memory alpha page on freaking the sphere, but not, um... Did you... Were you continue... I loved Reno when we first meet her. Were you... And I loved her in this episode. What did you guys think of her character and, like, the little bit of, like, tension between her and Stamets? That was great.
00:46:07
Speaker
That was one of the standout scenes. I love that. I love the banter between these two characters because in season one we have this... I found that the drama was too much and it was all very clearly, you know, staged anger or frustration and it just felt over the top. Whereas this did feel like banter. It felt like, you know, Bashir and O'Brien and I liked that. Spark and McCoy.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, I also feel like in this episode, we're kind of he's kind of getting out of his depression a little bit Stamets because he wasn't as like, sad, like, you know, there are plenty of other things to be sad about in this episode, but I thought Stamets was actually kind of recovering from his grief a little bit in this episode, which I liked also.
00:46:49
Speaker
That reminds me of another thing about the the cortical implant that they install in in Tilly. Oh, yeah, that is what humans are using the blob. What's good? Yeah, about the venom symbiote attached to Tilly. It's that it's true. Tilly, the cortical and the spirit unicorn. No, sorry, go on.
00:47:10
Speaker
They had that cortical device in the first episode of the season when he was rewatching those video messages of his boyfriend. And that kind of bugged me when we saw that, because I was like, that is a weird technology to have in this time period. One of those things that Discovery does. But no, that's actually something that you use in the spore drive. He said that that device was for coordinating your brain with the navigation of the spore drive. Thinking it up, yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, to be honest, that scene was just done to be cool. It was a cool fact. Yeah, it was cool. That's what it was done. Okay, so how does the Tada Grade tie into all of this in any way? Because at this point, the only thing I can really imagine is the Tada Grades in this story are kind of like the... They kind of like those... Have you guys seen Aquaman, right?
00:48:08
Speaker
No, I haven't seen it. They have giant dragon seahorses in Aquaman that they ride, right? In the movie, that's what they use. And I feel like that's the only reason why we have the Tardigrades in Discovery, because they're like the rides of the Spore people. What if Sporeland is like Avatar?
00:48:31
Speaker
Oh God, that means they're all connected with their tails and they mate the same way that they ride their horses. Yeah, what if like May actually looks crazy and she's riding around on a tardigrade like it's like popping across time and space. That's too much like the oval. We've seen that already. What are you talking about though? We had a scene where Alara was riding some sort of unicorn in front of a multi-sunset on a beach. It was the most
00:49:01
Speaker
cringy scene I've ever seen anyway. I think that, I think based on, we talked about this earlier, but I think based on all the controversy with the game, we're never going to see the target grades again. They're just like, no one off. I don't know. They do bring it up a lot. They've mentioned it a couple of times this season. Yeah, you had to be there, that kind of stuff, that kind of funny.
00:49:25
Speaker
But when the target... I still can't figure out why was it there and what was its purpose at the end? Because there's a lot of season one plots that when you think about them, they were, God, it's hideous. When you think about them, they're not useful or they're never really used anymore. Because even Cobra, where the hell is he?
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, the original idea, like we were talking about earlier, was that it would just be a regular character on the show. And the CGI was too expensive. So they're like, oh, it can only show up a couple of times. What does voice have been like? Danny DeVito, because he didn't get to do Detective Pikachu. Yes. He's just like getting in the spore chamber, like, OK, go ahead and get the nipple clamps on me. I'm ready to spore jump.
00:50:17
Speaker
Oh my god, that would have been amazing. You win. You win today's episode. It would be this. You'd be like, all right, captain, I'm ready to jump. I think you deserve it, Bridget Clapp.
00:50:32
Speaker
Good thought. And now there's the bridge salute where we stand up. Hold on, here we go. Hope you're wearing pants. Do I have to stand up? Goddamn. I was wondering what you would think about that, Sean. What did you think of the bridge salute at the end where everyone stands? I loved it, of course.
00:50:54
Speaker
I'm okay with the bridge salute because it's implied that Saroo's off to die. He's on his way to die. And so everyone kind of stands up and pays their respects to their comrade and officer. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with them standing up.
00:51:08
Speaker
I didn't notice. I didn't notice that they all stood up. It's actually a really moving scene. It starts with Captain Pike getting up out of his chair and then is she Lieutenant Non or Commander Non? Commander Non.
00:51:24
Speaker
Notices and then gets up and then all the rest of the crew follow suit and I love it. It's like I was so hungry for this kind of pomp and circumstances associated with like, you know, it's just kind of like protocol stuff that you got on Star Trek of old, if you will, and it's nice to see it in the new new Star Trek. If you want an embroidery.
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah. If you wanted to follow up to my whole beef with the clapping, because I find it too much, right? This episode's equivalent of that would be when Burnham says something to the effects of our original, Discovery's original mission statement is as a science vessel
00:52:03
Speaker
And I don't know, it's just in those moments, I kind of feel like it's the writers addressing the audience more than the character actually saying something like a line of dialogue. It kind of feels like they're trying to defend themselves by saying, yeah, we know Star Trek's about exploration and we're doing an episode about discovery.
00:52:20
Speaker
Calm down. I like that though. I didn't take it personally. I didn't take it personally at all. That was like, that's pretty intense. You're like, they're talking to me. I know it. They need to bring that up though. They need to bring that up more often. That discovery is supposed to be the scientific shift that does all the cool science stuff. Stop talking about it and just do it, right? This is my problem. Stop saying we are Starfleet and just be Starfleet.
00:52:47
Speaker
The Enterprise is technically an exploration vessel and has science. But it doesn't go around saying we are exploration, we are this, we are that. They just go out there and do things and find things. And then when they kill something, Picard gets all depressed on his chair. Kill this space whale. How many simultaneous experiments do you think happened on the Enterprise D?
00:53:13
Speaker
I don't know. If you had to guess the discovery has 300. Well, a lot because that the enterprise D is a ridiculously large, gigantic ship. Yeah. And they have a data and a Wesley, which are constantly doing a million things at once. Yeah. They have a bunch of labs on there. They have a lab for everything.
00:53:32
Speaker
It's true. Riker is the only person that's ever running an experiment. He's running an experiment, but it's on some of the women on board the ship. He's got long-term investments when we're on the ship.
00:53:52
Speaker
I have a few more points that we haven't talked about. By the way, this is a fun discussion. I'm really learning a lot about a lot of things that I didn't catch. So thank you. You're educating Starfleet. It did take us 10 minutes to actually start talking about the episode. I still feel like we haven't talked that much about it. No, not really. Exclusively about it, I think, maybe. I love the sphere. What did you think of it? That's going to end.
00:54:24
Speaker
Take it away, Sean. Take it away. I love the sphere. I am a little... Okay. This might be my build-up frustration from season one that's kind of coming over to season two because when, oh, of course, the sphere gives them 10,000 years worth of data and it's so much data, it all feels a little much. Why does it always have to be so big?
00:54:46
Speaker
It was a hundred thousand years, by the way. A hundred thousand. Okay, so it's even bigger. Like, why does it have to be so much? But then I can get over it. They found this one sphere, this one being, it gave them knowledge and it's cool. But I really liked the idea. I liked CG. I would have liked to, I would have liked to see more beauty shots maybe of like, just show us the freaking sphere. But then I understand that it's, it's, it seemed like a complicated thing to
00:55:11
Speaker
you know, to render, I suppose. But I like the design of the Discovery last season. And this season, I'm like, it's grown on me. I feel like they tweaked it, though. I do believe they may have, but it just looks beautiful this season. It's like the way they ship, the ship itself.
00:55:26
Speaker
Yeah, truck yards were trying to the channel truck yards. They were trying to compare some of the shots of it to previous episodes because they thought that they might have tweaked the design. But when they did like side by sides, the CGI model looked the same. I think they're lighting it better. Yeah. And we're getting better angles of it. Oh, one thing that bugged me in this episode.
00:55:51
Speaker
When number one beams aboard in the opening of the episode It bugged me that we don't know where the hell she's beaming from. Is there another ship nearby? Are they out of starbase? Like this happens a lot of discovery because in short tracks like the princess
00:56:08
Speaker
the you know she just beams out and we're like where did she go you know that that is possibly the main reason why that is the worst short trap well i'll tell you what it could become the best short trek if you learned that telly was actually working for section 31 and she beamed it to a cloak section 31 ship
00:56:26
Speaker
Oh my god. That would be awesome. Tilly is a sleeper agent working for section 31. That would be amazing. That would make that short trick the best. And it would make Tilly just mind-blowingly amazing. But that's not true. That's not going to happen. Well, you said it. It's on record now. I know. I said it so they can't use it now. Yeah. Everything I say, they can't use. Fail well. I don't know if that's not right. Make the Red Angels the Iconians. And they're talking to you.
00:56:56
Speaker
Directly, John, when I don't know, I personally addressed by that, but whatever. I am offended. Like Saniqua Martin Green looked at the camera and she's like, Sean, in Quebec, we want you to know that discovery is a scientific ship. OK, I would have liked that.
00:57:23
Speaker
To be honest, I would have loved that. It would be the most horrible thing. You're an apology. It would be horrible if they talked to me personally on that, but they still never called me or hired me, right? They just, they're taunting me. It would be terrible. He gives all his ideas away for freedom. Why do we need to hire him?
00:57:51
Speaker
Anyways, we're getting a little carried away with my show. I know we were supposed to be very much engaged in the Saru plot line, but I found myself enjoying the whole Tilly Swadrive thing a lot more, because I would have preferred them to focus maybe more on the sphere itself than the effects it was having on Saru. And I understand why they did it.
00:58:20
Speaker
They wanted to do like a Saru-centered episode, I suppose, and kind of build his character and the species. But I would have liked us to investigate the anomaly a little more. I'm not saying beam aboard it or whatever, like we've seen in TNG happen, but I don't know, maybe just spend more time trying to figure out what this thing is. Because essentially it was just a big ball of fire that came, it spoke, it died.
00:58:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, yeah. It came, it spoke, it died. But yeah.
00:58:58
Speaker
I think that what I did like about the sphere is that it reminded me of these just weird things that are floating around in the universe, like the space amoeba or the crystal line entity. What happened? Did these things meet at some point? Does the crystal line entity meet with the space amoeba at some point? Yeah, they have like an entity. Do they have like a duo? Is there like a space beef going on? Welcome to space entity con 2392.
00:59:24
Speaker
We got the Cylinder Probe from Star Trek 4 rolling up. Here's the Gormagander, Discovery season one. Here's the Tin Man. Yeah, it actually, yeah, it's true, you're right. Wesley Crusher. The Traveler shows up, Q is there. The guy with the shower curtain wrapped around him and the children shall lead. Wow. Oh my God.
00:59:53
Speaker
The what are we calling the sphere? Do we have a Starfleet boy name for it? It's officially designated as the sphere on memory alpha. So they didn't really get anything like it had a was it multi multi phasic stasis filled, so I guess maybe like the multi phasic sphere. It could also be called the fireball because it looked like a fireball. I wish it wasn't red because when we first see it, I thought, oh, they like went to a red burst.
01:00:24
Speaker
but then like, no, that's not even what it is. It wasn't blue. And I thought that, I was like, well, they can't make it blue because everything on the show is blue. I almost said a dirty word there, but they could make it green, I guess. And then when it's about to die and it gets hot, it turns like more green, yellow. And then it's like yellow and gets really bright. It reminds me, it was really cool when they switched to the ultraviolet view and then you see it like look completely different. And we kind of understand a little bit how Saru
01:00:54
Speaker
sees the world. I don't know if they've ever done this on Star Trek other than Jory's visor, but have they ever done from the perspective of like an Andorian? Did we have a perspective of Species 8.72 at some point? Yeah, when they're like on the board cube, I think.
01:01:15
Speaker
So you see through its eyes? I think you do at some point. I don't, I, I haven't. No, no, no. I think when it comes back on Voyager and it's like running through the corridors, like, uh. We're seeing through Borg's eyes. Cause I think they do that on first contact. Yeah. Hmm. I don't recall, but I mean, maybe.
01:01:36
Speaker
Well, they call it, Mike calls it the spider, if you want to call it the spider. Yeah. Spiderball. Spiderball. It's like a very slow moving version of Spiderman. Was it slow? Was it slow moving? That's my impression. I don't know. I mean, it plucked a ship out of work. But then does it have to be faster?
01:02:04
Speaker
So it's that big. It should have had like an attraction, right? It should have been like an orbit, like a gravitational pull on that thing, right? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, they said what the mass of it was, and it was huge. It was like six to the tenth power or something. I read on the internet that the exact size of this ball, of the spider ball that they give is the same size as the moon Charon, the Charon moon. Oh! Or planet Charon, is it?
01:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, in our solar system. In our solar system. And so that ties into the episode title, which is excellent. Oh, that is cool. That's fun. We're excellent. Yeah, that's great. Um, yeah, that who like that works at NASA and like knows like the size of every, I don't know, I don't know, but Oh, that's so clever. Some people find some things, you know, the whole point of light. Don't know if you guys saw my last video, but I talked about the title, the episode title point of light. Yeah.
01:03:01
Speaker
I don't know if you saw my podcast on that, but one of the things that I kept going on about was like, why call this episode Point of Light? That's a boring, stupid title. Turns out it's about planet, what's its face? Borath. Yeah, it's about that. Anyway, the people that find these things, I need the internates to help me make my videos.
01:03:27
Speaker
That's I have a gap in my track knowledge. What's planet Borath? That's where the monastery is from the next generation episode rightful air when when that's where they drop off the albino baby, which may or may not grow up to be the albino from DS nine episode blood oath.
01:03:47
Speaker
So the thing is, the episode was called Point of Light, and no one really understood why they called it Point of Light. It's kind of a boring name, especially for an episode that had nothing to do with any of the red bursts or anything. But then you find out that Kalis called Planet Borath Point of Light. And then at the end of that episode, we go to Planet Borath, and we deposit baby, VOC baby.
01:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, in Klingon mythology, he pointed at that star and said, I will return from that point of light. And so it was a great time. I mean, they do holograms everywhere, but then they do that kind of stuff. So you're like, you guys clearly know what you're talking about. Well, the writers do, but I think it was more of just like the production design that... We need a high iron.
01:04:35
Speaker
that the, when they were the show runners, they wanted things like, you know, flashy holograms and stuff like that. Like, kind of like, let's moon vest too. And now he's done. And so I feel like this episode was written or co written by Aaron, how it's Christian J. Berg, by the way. And I think this will be the end. This is this is the end of of the impact that they've had on the show.
01:04:59
Speaker
There could potentially be like a future script that they had worked on. Okay, so they would rework the script maybe and like they would have to legally keep their names on it. Like this episode it said like, it had like a writer credit and then it had like a story credit. Yeah, it didn't feel like them. It didn't feel like season one or their way of creating characters. Like Lieutenant Connolly is very clearly an Aaron Harbert's Gretchen J. Berg concept.
01:05:27
Speaker
Um, and I won't go too far into that, but Lieutenant mansplain. Yeah. This, this, this, this episode didn't feel like that at all. Um, what was the revelation about Saru's people? Is it that they mature and these ganglia fall out and then they don't have fear anymore, but like up until now until then or he moved on to the next step in his evolution or something like that.
01:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, like you don't have the the fear anymore like that constant anxiety. But he was saying that like the the ganglia coming out full time like that is the mark or the time when you're cold, right?
01:06:11
Speaker
of a Hari, right? Exactly. And that's what they talk about in that Short Treks episode. So all of those... It's all very confusing to me. It is. They need to clarify. Originally, it was just the Kelpians being hunted by an alpha species. And then the Short Trek establishes that they go willingly. They freely go and sacrifice themselves like a bunch of morons. Well, because they think that...
01:06:37
Speaker
like just like Saru thought like and then now they now they explain that the thingy magics come out and when these thingy magics come out by like on a biological level um he has to die or some shit so i don't i don't know how all those plots tie into each other i think whoa hey gary hey what's up gary coming into the gary we've never talked before but
01:07:04
Speaker
No, we haven't. Hi, nice to see you. How are you doing? You're just in time to give a rating. Huh? How are you doing here? I just popped into the right time then. We were actually in an intense discussion about Saru's people. It's very dirty. I loved it. I can't wait to listen to that.
01:07:30
Speaker
Well, to finish that point, so Gary, we were wondering what is the deal with the ganglia? It seems like at some point, the way I saw it was, what I saw was the equivalent of how humans go through different stages in their own lifespan. So when we pass from puberty into adolescence and then from adolescence into adulthood, so maybe Saru
01:07:59
Speaker
people like have never gone into their adulthood, so to speak, because when the ganglia, when Vahari or whatever comes up, they always just willingly have gone, they're like lemmings, they just jump off the cliff, so to speak, you know, like, without knowing.
01:08:15
Speaker
And because Saru had to endure past it, now he's like, oh crap. And what if his dad actually has gone through the Bahari and doesn't have his threat ganglion anymore either? And there's all kinds of interesting implications going on there. I have a feeling that the Miro universe secretly taking them out and then making them into suits.
01:08:43
Speaker
What? Oh, he's saying that the actual... So we were saying, we came up with... No, no, no, no. I was just thinking because they're so popular. Apparently, it's so popular in the Mirro universe to have a Ganglia soup. So, I think, it's fair to assume that the Mirro universe seeks to take in the market. Oh, my God. Do you think there's not enough Kelpian? Like, the demand is too high for Mirro Kelpians. So, they're actually stealing Prime Kelpians as well. Oh, why not? That's a really good idea.
01:09:11
Speaker
I don't, I don't know if we're going to go back to the mirror universe. I wouldn't think so. We do. We go back in, uh, in like 12 years, uh, on the enterprise with Kirk. That's not on discovery. But kiss is in a compa. Okay. And so she eventually becomes non corporeal. Um, she's like,
01:09:42
Speaker
evolves into this next state of existence, right? Yeah, she's going to be an entity con with all the other creatures. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so, you know, that's interesting because she later on she come back for your.
01:09:53
Speaker
But then isn't that by her own choice or some shit? I forgot. I forgot that. Yeah, probably. But so Saru, is it a similar situation for Kelpians where like they don't become non corporal, non corporeal, but they lose the ganglia and therefore evolve into like this higher state of their own existence. They they now are in control of their like strength and speed and what have you.
01:10:15
Speaker
We got a taste of No Fear Saru in that episode with the Crystal Tower. Yeah, Babo with the Pavans. Explain that they're very strong and very, you know, very fast and what have you, but then it's kind of implied in the short-trick episode that they don't...
01:10:31
Speaker
Without his spirit, he went totally nuts. Like, do you think that can happen again now? Like, do you think that, like... I have power! He did! He just ripped the chair, like, I am captain now. He just run around with his knife that his sister gave him, stabbing people.
01:10:46
Speaker
I think it was very intentional, but there were two scenes that made me super uncomfortable. One was when he was talking about how powerful he feels. I was like, whoa, that's off-putting about Saru. And then the other scene was Burnham was actually going to kill Saru. I don't care what's wrong with you. I could never imagine doing a mercy killing.
01:11:07
Speaker
T&T had an entire episode about how dramatic that is to do. It's such a horrible choice and decision to make. Burnham was straight up yama kill your ass. She was ready to kill through. DS9 covered that too with Worf's brother, Kern. That's right. That wasn't long ago in my rewatch.
01:11:30
Speaker
I don't think I was uncomfortable because I didn't think she, I was joking when I said she's definitely wants to kill him, but it was just an uncomfortable scene because whatever, she made her choice. I actually think that assisted suicide should be allowed. If you're in pain and you're suffering and you're not, I just couldn't do, I couldn't be the one to do it. I would never be able to assist. If any of you guys had so much pain and needed me to assist you, I couldn't do it.
01:11:57
Speaker
Okay, but here's the thing, Pike, when Burnham comes back into Pike's ready room, he kind of assumes that Saru died, right? But he's kind of thinking Saru left the bridge, went to his quarters and then died and Burnham was next to him as he died. I don't think in his mind at any point he thought Burnham killed him.
01:12:25
Speaker
Because that's a very different thing. Burnham killing another Starfleet officer as opposed to Burnham being there in the last moments of a dying Starfleet officer is very different, right? It's very tough stuff. It's very controversial, I think. And it's interesting that there's not more of a discussion about it. But just the whole, I guess, it's a personal thing, where everyone stands on that kind of thing. But yeah, it was cool. I have one more thing.
01:12:51
Speaker
on my notes. And then I'm done. I don't know if you guys have more notes. We'll drop it on us. What do you got?
01:13:00
Speaker
So I just thought, as a closing thought, I'm just like insanely impressed about these first four episodes of Star Trek Savory. Like they're just so different from last season. And I just love to me the standout moment or the standout scene was like, for me, what was like the most emotional thing
01:13:21
Speaker
regardless of all the other stuff going on with Burnham and Tilly and everything was like, I actually loved when Captain Pike was like, you know, I have to do this by my oath and my conscience. And like he actually like puts the, they did the most Star Trek thing you could do. They just like put faith in science and exploration and like goodness and like all the like things that, you know, like. Hashtag we are Starfleet. Hashtag we are Starfleet or whatever. And then the reward is this like, you know, amazing like knowledge
01:13:51
Speaker
that they're gonna be able to like, you know, figure stuff out with for centuries. So I just- You're on the Picard show whenever Picard needs to learn something. Look up what we got from that sphere 130 years ago. Spiderball, it's true. So that's my closing statement. I'm ready to give my ratings. Now it's your turn if you guys have any more notes or anything.
01:14:14
Speaker
I do think the sphere will provide some information regarding the red angel or the red burst. That's why they did the whole thing. I think that's probably why they did that. Yeah. Well, it gave them extra information about Spock's shuttle. So the chase is still on. We think that they make the choice to save the knowledge and they lose Spock. But at the end, they're actually rewarded because the sphere itself also was tracking Spock somehow. And so they find out where he is.
01:14:44
Speaker
Let's see, it wasn't tracking Spock. I think it just crossed paths with them, did it? Well, but it knew, it like gave them the information they needed to know where Spock is now. So it was kind of an interesting thing. The chase continues. How long do you think it'll be before we see Spock?
Season 2's Improvement and Pike's Leadership
01:15:08
Speaker
Next episode.
01:15:09
Speaker
No. They're destroying the spoil drive in the next episode. Yeah, that's going to be a whole episode. I think we're two episodes away. You think there's going to be a whole Section 31 plot line before we see Spark, right?
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah. So I think next episode is all about like getting rid of the sport drive. And the episode after that is going to have Georgia again, and it's going to be like a competition with her to get to Spock first or something like that. And then that episode will like end with Spock showing up. And the episode after that will be like the first one where he is like actually on the show doing stuff. I agree with that. Yeah, it sounds right.
01:15:49
Speaker
Okay, I think season two is a huge step up from season one at this point. And to be honest, I kind of feel like in retrospect, looking back at the ratings that I gave season one on Starfleet Boy, I kind of feel like I rated a lot of these episodes pretty high. Wow. Yeah.
01:16:08
Speaker
I kind of feel like I was, I, yeah, I gave them- You can suggest your scale. Yeah, I would have given a lot of things that I gave, I gave sevens, I would have given maybe sixes. It doesn't seem like a big change, but it is to me. Anyway, you know, this season is good. For the moment, it's good. It's become a show that I no longer really feel obligated to watch just because of the channel, but because it has such a name on it. I'm happy to watch Discovery. I'm happy to sit down and watch it.
01:16:38
Speaker
That's awesome. And I'm going to be honest, it has a lot to do with Pike. I think that he is truly a beacon of light in this series. He brings something that just wasn't present before. And I kind of feel like the actors doing the same thing as well for the cast and crew. I'm not saying like the cast scene, they all seem very like nice people, but he seems so open and friendly and I don't know. A little bit.
01:17:07
Speaker
A little a little moment to give a shout out to Anson Mount, the actor who plays Captain Pike. He has a podcast called The Well that he does with his friend and it's pretty neat. Check it out. Yeah. The only time I've only seen him act in in humans before the list and that was absolute garbage.
01:17:30
Speaker
He
Emotional Impact and Progress of Discovery
01:17:31
Speaker
was also on the show Hell on Wheels, the Western show. I haven't seen that, which apparently is very good. I will say that even though Inhumans was absolute garbage and cement was good in it because he acts without speaking the whole time and he still gives the best performance. So yeah. Ratings or after?
01:17:54
Speaker
No, father hasn't given his closing statement and Gary, you should give a closing statement. What should I for? I didn't even get a opening. I know it'll be a preview of your video tomorrow. It's going to be interesting one for me. No, I came last time.
01:18:15
Speaker
OK, well, I'll go ahead and go then. With this episode, I was initially in love with everything going on and thinking, oh, wow, this is going to be my favorite Star Trek Discovery episode. And I felt that way until about halfway through it until Burnham said, Saru, you're the most empathetic soul I've ever known.
01:18:35
Speaker
And after that point, some of the more emotional moments, they did feel a little forced to me. A lot of times, the acting and the execution of the scene was so good that I could still go along with it. But just sometimes, the way they describe their relationship, how they're like family now, kind of feels like they rushed into that. It felt a little unearned. And I didn't quite connect all the emotional beats in there.
01:18:58
Speaker
So that doesn't ruin the episode for me, just kept it from being what I would consider a perfect episode of Star Trek Discovery. I was super invested in what was going on with Tilly. I was super invested with the sphere. I thought it was a cool little Star Trek concept. I love the stuff they did with the universal translator. I thought that was awesome. It is undeniably recognizable as Star Trek and
01:19:21
Speaker
I think at this point, you can't really take anyone seriously if they're saying that Discovery isn't really Star Trek. I mean, show them this episode. This felt more Star Trek than anything I've seen in decades. Not quite perfect, but definitely something to make me excited for Discovery going forward. I think they really have the show on a better track now than they did in season one. And I'm very optimistic
True Star Trek Tradition?
01:19:45
Speaker
for where the show is going. Awesome.
01:19:51
Speaker
That got me all. That's good. You win again, father. Did you write that statement down or did you just come up with that? No, but I mean, I did record my podcast last night. So you have to get some of these thoughts out. But it's interesting that you mentioned that because like when I was talking about how Burnham says original mission statement of discovery,
01:20:16
Speaker
I know I said that affects me. That bugged you, like how other stuff bugged me. But what you said, you are the most empathic soul, is literally I have those two sentences next to each other because those are part of the same problem for me. It's kind of like sometimes they talk instead of doing a little too much. So that's just part of my issues with it.
01:20:39
Speaker
But the flaws grow smaller and smaller as the show progresses. And I feel like... Certainly. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm happy that modern Star Trek stumbled on Discovery rather than on Picard. And I feel like it was a good thing that we got rid of all of the ship in Discovery and Picard's going to come in strong. We had to have a shakedown cruise before like the ship was really optimal. Nicely put.
01:21:08
Speaker
All right, Gary, come on, just do it for fun. A closing statement. I know you were not in the discussion. You can open and close on the same statement. Yeah, same statement. No, I agree with all of you, what you said before. I
01:21:27
Speaker
I still cannot really feel, just from the show for myself, that I'm watching like a classic DNG episode of DS9. I don't have the attachment with the custom that I had with those guys. But I'm pretty sure after a couple of seasons, if we're going to get there, it's going to change.
01:21:50
Speaker
I do like it what it was, was for what it was. And I hope we're going to see more of it, even though it had its own. But it didn't make me feel the way how I felt with other episodes. And that's regarding some of it. Definitely a big improvement from Season 1 so far. But yeah, if they kind of keep this up,
01:22:15
Speaker
going to be OK. It's
Unique Rating Scale and Final Thoughts
01:22:17
Speaker
certainly something that I'm feeling more comfortable to sit down and watch. Maybe not the Klingon episode, but yeah. I would consider rewatching season one. Not season one.
01:22:30
Speaker
I want to go so far as to say that like there are even things season two is so good so far that like it's enhancing things from season one that I didn't like you know or that I didn't pay attention to. I think that's cool because you're kind of if you want to have the the full impact of how good the season is now you almost kind of have to watch
01:22:49
Speaker
season one to see what you know I mean like it's kind of an interesting thing that it does it's like it's it's saving season one in a way I don't know what are you showing us Sean should I put this on screen you can try go ahead hold on this is my this is my official um scale this is how I write television series as of recently
01:23:16
Speaker
By any chance? What? Is that like a one to ten skill? Well, it's one to eleven, but yeah. Absolute bullshit, bullshit, bad, mediocre. Average on the low side, average, average on the high side. All right, good, great, true greatness. I feel like Discovery season two is sitting tight at all right at the moment. It's an all right show.
01:23:44
Speaker
All right. Whereas season one was really average on the low side, too. Yeah, I love this truck because I now understand what all right is in my world, which in my world, it's like, awesome. All right, all right, all right. All right.
01:24:03
Speaker
So yeah. It's absolute bullshit! So Discovery went from Season 1 being average on the low side for me to Season 2 being alright, which is just a huge jump.
01:24:18
Speaker
Hmm? Generally speaking, discovery is average. By the way, that's a huge leap. Since you have so many spokes on your scale, from average on the low side to all right is actually you're going one, two, three, four notches up on your scale. Yeah, it is. It's huge, isn't it? Yeah. Fascinating. I will be using this
01:24:45
Speaker
I feel like we're going to use this with your permission. This is going to be the scale. No more wonder pens. It's got to be a threshold is absolute bullshit. What episode for you is a true greatness, true greatness and episode of Star Trek. Um, uh, the visitor.
01:25:11
Speaker
Okay, so on a scale of absolute, I'm sorry, on a scale of threshold to the visitor, where would you rank an aubel for Charon? Oh, wow, that's great. Where would I put it? I don't know. It would probably be an average on the high side on this scale.
01:25:37
Speaker
I give the- No, it'd be alright. It'd be alright. I give the Obel for Karan great on your scale. Oh wow, okay. Yeah. But do we have to do real ratings? Well, I give it a 10.
01:25:54
Speaker
I'm Gary from the TNG season two. I'm going to stop sharing that. Goodbye. I really gave a lot of tens in season two of TNG, Gary. How do I stop this? Good. I'm back. I would put either season of Discovery way over TNG season two.
01:26:20
Speaker
Well, what are your ratings, gentlemen, for this episode? Gary, I know your ratings, but you could go ahead and give it next. Well, me right now. OK, eight out of 10. OK. Whoever wants to go next. So what number is all right? All right is like seven out of 11.
01:26:43
Speaker
Right? If it's your own scale, it'll definitely be all right. Well, I'm in my scale. My scale's out of 11, so it makes no sense. Why didn't I know about your scale when I started Starfleet Boy? It's so much cooler than like... Because I made it up last week for my video. That's like, I need to find a way to classify Season 1 and Season 2. Because like, Dix the Season 4 is true greatness, but Dix the Season 8 is like absolute bullshit. If that means anything to anyone.
01:27:14
Speaker
What about the expansion season one through four? Oh, the expanse are all just like great. All of them. All right. You're you're rating sir, since we have you on screen now. Me? Well, he was good. Go ahead. Go ahead. You were giving your rating. Sean wants to go last. So
01:27:39
Speaker
I always struggle with trying to give an actual numerical rating to something. I would always refer to something like a long conversation about it. I always have a hard time with this, but I guess I would give it a 7.47, just to throw in 47. This was the first reference to 47, wasn't it, in Discovery? No, they've done it twice before. They did it in the first episode. In the second episode, they have shields at 47% of the Battle of the Binary Stars.
01:28:09
Speaker
And then two weeks ago, Tilly and her friend May, they were in school together in the class of 2247. Okay, so I didn't pick up. What was the 47 in this episode? I didn't catch it. I think it is. She was at 47% again. Oh, wow. I didn't even notice that. And I'm always looking for 47. I never noticed it.
01:28:36
Speaker
Everyone has to tell me. Starfleet Boy might be brain damaged. Okay, Sean, what's your rating? Brain damage. Oh my God. I had a concussion. I still have it. It's still happening. It's still happening. It was a long time ago. I swear it's happening. I think I'd give this episode a six. For 10, 6, 7.747.
01:29:06
Speaker
Yeah. An 8 and a 10. Nice. So it averages out to. Is this a real average that you're going to do? Gary usually does the math. All right, let me get my calculator. Hold on. What is it? It's a 10 plus an 8. 10, 6, 7.747, and 8. 7.47.
01:29:36
Speaker
uh 7.47 7.86 okay so we can round up eight eight which does not rhyme with hate it does yeah it does though yeah
01:29:59
Speaker
Gentlemen, this was wonderful. I feel like we had another summit. We always get summits together for Star Trek Discovery. It's so exciting. It attracts more people than TNG does, to be honest. Yes, it's a topical conversation. Yeah, I'm the only schmuck that goes on to talk about TNG.
01:30:19
Speaker
I've watched a lot of those. I've watched a lot of those TNG conversations. Father wants to be on those too, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of busy right now with doing the discovery stuff, but at some point... If a good episode comes up. Everyone wants to be contacted for Damok and shit, right? But then no one wants to do all the... Well, you're in season seven now, right? No.
01:30:49
Speaker
Are we? No, five. We're season five. Oh, wait. No, I think you're in season six, at least. We don't even know. We don't know. We need to go. Oh, my gosh. It's because we haven't recorded one in a long time. It's because we just did season six, episode one, right? That was it. I was stuck there. That's why. OK, we're in a time loop. It's time zero. We're in a time loop. Hashtag so pro.
01:31:19
Speaker
Before we go, audience, if you'd love to, if you made it this far, thank you, first of all. 93 minutes, not bad though, considering there's a lot of stuff to talk about in this episode. If you made it this far, thank you so much for listening or watching. If you're on YouTube, please comment below with your ideas. You'll see links in the below section to everyone here's channel. Everyone here has a YouTube channel, so I'll start with Sean.
01:31:48
Speaker
Trek on the tube go check him out and then father II who is next is Text Trek and then Gary is trekker prize I don't know why I said all those like so dramatically But if that's the William Shatner school of acting in me Chuck a prize sabotage Okay
01:32:15
Speaker
That's how he said sabotage. Anyway, so check out these good folks and their channels and all their stuff. Awesome stuff. And live long and prosper and we'll see you next time. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for being on.