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Discovering the Butcher’s Knife

This week, John, Ken and YOU tackle episode four of Star Trek: Discovery. What’s going on with Voq? Tardigrade – delightful or deadly? And Landry, we hardly knew ye. Plus – Women at Warp’s Sue Kisenwether joins us to talk Discovery’s time at New York Comic Con.

 

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Discussion

  1. Scott Newland says:
    October 11, 2017 at 8:56 am

    Having seen the new episodes and heard your discussions (via podcast or website; I haven’t been able to schedule the live watch), I thought I’d offer some quick comments:
    1. With the current episode, I am generally liking the various story threads and how they’re developing – “science versus war” as someone said, along with internal struggles among the Klingons.
    2. I hate hate hate the re-re-redesigned Klingons. Unless there is some unbelievable explanation that various “houses” have different looking Klingons or something, it works against any continuity with the other series. They’re mumbly-mouthed ponderous speech also doesn’t help.
    3.The tardigrade-like “monster” and Burnham’s and Stamets’s discovery of its true nature is wonderful; I look forward to seeing what comes of that in the next few episodes as the creature is exploited against its well.
    4. The comparison between Lorca and Admiral Marcus is interesting – both seem to act as if the end justifies the means, and I hope this first season of STD (an unfortunate acronym) is in fact a “long arc morality tale” that reinforces a meaningful Star Trek message.
    5. Like the Women at Warp caller said, I was also dismayed that two strong non-white females have been killed off so soon. I was especially sorry to see the Michelle Yeoh character go. The fact that she’s been replaced by a white man is unfortunate. Having said that, Jason Isaacs’ portrayal of Captain Lorca is very strong. Maybe he’s the right captain for a brutal war context, but Picard will always be the best captain in any series so far.
    6. Finally, I wonder about that Klingon ship – is it unique, with a non-Klingon origin? The look of it is so alien, so complicated, and so needlessly baroque that it further works against continuity. It’s another huge contrast to TOS, but I have to try to let it go as 1960’s vs. 2010’s production values.
    Thank you for the live episode follow-ups. It helps to extend the watching experience to hear the discussion soon thereafter.

  2. gizmochimp says:
    October 11, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    Things that worked:

    – The opening shot of the synthesizer. Really cool.
    – Finally, some morality and ethical questions to chew on with the tardigrade. We know for a fact the Federation does not use spore transportation in the future despite it’s amazing power. The question is why? My first thought was the spores might turn out to be sentient, but turns out it’s the tardigrade that is. This all feels very Trek to me. Knowing that the Federation COULD possibly be using this amazing instant travel tech during OS and TNG but chooses not to says a lot about the Federation living up to its ideals in a big way. Kind of a cool ret-con, if that’s how it plays out.

    Things that didn’t work:

    – Lots of sloppy writing with plot holes. Everyone’s gone over a lot of these already so I won’t repeat them, but it’s riddled with holes.
    – “This thing just killed an entire ship and a bunch of Klingons. Here, let me let it out with only a weapon that I know will not work.” HOW. DUMB. IS. THIS?

  3. wchmara says:
    October 15, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    How touchy does one have to be to use the excuse “two women of color were killed off, so I’m not watching anymore”?
    Has anyone kept score how many men not of color have been killed off over the decades? Geez.