williams_482
Well, the previously inexplicable “inject a bunch of drugs to fight Klingons” scene in the season opener has suddenly paid off.
I have little to say now except that this episode was a seriously heavy hitter. Just… wow. And ouch.
There are relatively few direct references to Discovery in Lower Decks. More importantly, you’ll enjoy Lower Decks even if you don’t notice or “get” a handful of references.
Lower Decks isn’t good because it references older shows, it’s good because it’s funny and you care about the characters. There are people out there watching it and loving it with minimal or no prior Trek knowledge.
You realize that ChatGPT has no concept of “true”, right? It produces output which looks coherent and reasonable and tends to stumble into truthful statements on accident, by virtue of drawing from a dataset of people saying mostly true things. Of course, the bot is equally capable of spouting off outright lies in an equally convincing manner.
This is a very unreliable way to verify a surprising fact. I strongly recommend against it.
I thought this episode was fantastic.
The pacing was good, the interactions between Kirk and La’an were fun, and the closing acts were a real gut wrench. Being forced through such a traumatic situation and completely unable to talk with anyone about it is a piece of the time travel/Prime Directive secrecy that Star Trek hasn’t really dug it’s teeth into before, and there’s clearly something very powerful to work with here.
Also, hilarious use of their immortal chief engineer. In retrospect, no surprise that someone in that position wouldn’t maintain exactly the same hobbies and skills throughout the centuries, and also no real shock that this particular individual got her jollies stealing priceless artwork. And then arguing statute of limitations when she is challenged on it centuries later? Brilliant.
I do not give the slightest of damns about a TOS one-liner placing Kahn in the 1990s. This is a good story which wouldn’t work properly otherwise, and that was a poor choice from writers who couldn’t have possibly known better. Absolutely do not care, and so much happier for it.
After a fairly meh first episode, SNW S2 has reeled off a pair of real bangers. Looking forward to the next installment.
Much to my own surprise, I’m a complete sucker for this budding Spock/Chapel romance. I just want these two beautiful people to be happy together, damn it! We all know it’s doomed, unfortunately, and I hope that whatever inevitably destroys it doesn’t turn out to be too painful for the characters involved. Spock and Chapel are obviously not engaged in a romantic relationship in TOS, most obviously in Amok Time when such a pairing would have rendered the entire story trivial.
Someone mentioned in a previous thread that Spock’s Pon Farr (seven years before Amok Time) is closing in. I was skeptical in that thread that they would choose to touch on it then, but the events of this episode do make that seem quite a bit more likely, if (again) increasingly difficult to square with Amok Time.
Touching on the actual character moments for a bit here: the events of this episode do not reflect well on Chapel.
She’d been hitting on Spock literally since the beginning of the show, and openly pining after him for most of that time. Four episodes ago, she winds up breaking down in tears explaining to an alien telephone receptionist how much she cares about him. Two episodes ago she is extremely distraught when Boimler accidentally lets slip that Spock is famous in the future, and her relationship with him almost certainly will not last. And now, she gets into a three month fellowship that she didn’t think she had much of a chance at, doesn’t say a word to Spock until she has no other choice, and then busts out a (involuntary, but reflective of genuine emotion) musical number about how “free” she feels. What the hell.
We already know Chapel has some problems with commitment, but this is a whole 'nother level. Throwing away a relationship she spent most of this show obsessively wishing for, without any apparent consideration for Spock’s feelings or non-breakup solutions to spending a couple months apart, is just wild. I’m sure the finale will touch on this with a little more nuance than a musical number was likely to give, but whatever else is said this is not a good look.
I feel compelled to note that being promoted from Ensign (O1) to Lieutenant Commander (O4) would be a triple promotion, skipping both Lieutenant Jr. Grade and Lieutenant.
Of course Kurn is victimized by bad kerning.
Poor Christine Chapel! Now she knows what the audience has always known: her relationship with Spock is ultimately doomed. Plus a delightful mix of guilt and fear that she could unwittingly cause Spock to never measure up to the vague but crucial future that Boimler mentioned to her in the turbolift, simply by trying to make the two of them happy.
That suuuuuucks.
