Star Trek Discovery

I have seen the first (and maybe second?) season of Discovery before. Don't know why I watched it when I'd only seen 2 Trek movies before! Probably just because it was on Netflix at the time. All I really remember is that (later in the season spoilers!) they use a weird warp drive or something that is alive? And that Jason Isaacs turns out to be an evil guy from the mirror universe.

Ok first up a strawberry floating massive moan. All these separate streaming platforms are annoying at the best of times. Netflix, Amazon, Disney etc etc. But Paramount are really strawberry floating annoying. I was offered a decent Black Friday (Nov 2022) deal, 12 months for £34. Bargain! Sign me up!

Except, by doing that, I can barely watch it on anything. I usually watch TV in the bedroom via my Xbox as I can plug headphones into the controller. But there's no Paramount Plus app for Xbox in the UK. But it's ok, you can add it as a channel to Apple TV or Amazon! Except you can't do that if you've bought Paramount Plus from Paramount, only if you originally sign up through Apple/Amazon.

So that's banana splitish as strawberry float. Oh well, it'll just mean I can't watch with headphones. Except I can't watch it on my TV, because there's no compatible app for LG TVs that are a few years old. Every other strawberry floating platform manages it.

So my only options are to buy an extra smart TV stick (like a Fire stick) or watch downstairs on a telly that can have the app. Except I never get to watch anything downstairs as it's always taken over by my son or wife. So I'll have to buy a strawberry floating Fire Stick or else only be able to watch an episode or two a week. ARGHH!

And Paramount refuse to offer refunds. The strawberry floating banana splits.

This is what I get for trying to be honest. I'm pirating strawberry floating everything from now on. Wankers. I assume this rant will make me furiously angry all over again in a few years when I post it on the forum again.

Anyway, episode one.

The Vulcan Hello

I'd forgotten that the Klingons are redesigned and weird looking in this. I really don't like their look, but I don't remember hating it before.

When I watched this a few years ago, I'd have had no idea who Sarek was or what that would mean.

The tech is ridiculously advanced compared to TOS. I am not a stickler for sticking to canon in shows like this, but why set it just before TOS if they are going to make everything so much more advanced? The Abrams movies had the same issue but it's easy to write that off as an alternate reality. I'm going to try and avoid spending the entire series whining about inconsistencies and canon changes though!

Overall it's a pretty good opening episode. Michelle Yeoh is always great and Martin-Green is good, even if she has a stupid name in this.

Battle at the Binary Stars

Brilliant action in this episode. The effects are such a step up from the previous Trek shows. Which makes sense, it was made a long time after Enterprise!

I'm struggling to get used to the new Klingon look, they are so different (in look) that they might as well be a new species.

Life imprisonment, all those years into the future and we are still doing that gooseberry fool. Has the Federation really not got better punishment/rehabilitation?

I enjoyed this though, it rattled along at a great pace and the performances were all fantastic.

Context is for Kings

Bizarre episode title, let's see if it makes sense after watching.

Hello to Jason Isaacs

Ooo they still have Beatles cover bands in the future. And I thought the Beastie Boys were the only 20th century music to survive.

"I won't make trouble here" to stealing somebody's breath in the space of a few minutes.

Took me ages to work out where I knew Stamets from. Road Trip

The title indeed made sense in the end. Isaacs is just a wonderful actor, why isn't he in literally everything?

Another good episode, this show has started very well. The creepy haunted house style bit was great.

The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry

It took longer to write that title than to watch the episode.

Good news, I now have a Firestick and some Bluetooth headphones, so I might whine a bit less.

Klingons eat the corpses of fallen enemies? I now see Worf in a different light.

Erghh that Elon Musk comment hadn't aged well.

They killed the Battlestar lady! I thought she was going to be in it for a while.

This spore thing is such bollocks. The episodes are entertaining, but the tardigrade and spores are too bullshitty to take seriously.

Choose Your Pain

Harry Mudd

"So strawberry floating cool". Hilarious and cringey at the same time. Felt totally out of place.

The spore thing is still annoying me, it just sounds like really crap fanfic.

Other than that shite, it was another entertaining episode. I'm intrigued by what equipment you need for Klingon sex....

Lethe

I've never really bought the "logic" thing with Vulcans. Most of the time what they describe as logic isn't very logical.

He probably did it for different reasons than sticking up for Burnham, but fair play to Spock for telling the Vulcans he was joining Starfleet

Isaacs getting some Season/series spoiler: I remember he is from the mirror universe, it really shows when you know you are looking for it, he really isn't very Federation!

Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

I guess this series had the budget to pay for 20th/21st century music. It really stands out after the other series only really used classical or jazz. Weird that their party's are using 200 year old music though!

Harry Mudd was terrible in TOS, but I enjoy him in this. The bloke from the US Office is great.

And I love a time loop episode, it's fun to kill main characters and blow up the ship!

Really enjoyed this one.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

To save people having to Google, if you want peace, prepare for war.

Energy beings, again? I bet it ends badly.

Not dreadful but the worst episode so far. It triggered a memory that (minor series spoilers) Saru's species is prey for another alien species on his planet, I think we meet them at some point?

Into the Forest I Go

There must be an easier way to scan a ship.

Decent enough episode even if it was very stupid in places. Burnham holding her own against an experienced Klingon warrior!

I really don't remember much of this show and so don't know (series spoilers!) if they crossed into the mirror universe at the end. I think they do at some point but not sure if that happens later on.

Despite Yourself

I knew there was something dodgy about that banana split, but didn't remember he was a disguised Klingon.

Great episode, the mirror universe can be gooseberry fool but it was very menacing here. The "comedy" with Tilly let it down a bit though. She seems to be a bit of a one trick pony, it's just "haha, she talks a lot!", which isn't very funny.

The Wolf Inside

15 minutes until the opening credits? Wtf!

It's a weird show. I'm enjoying a lot of it, but parts of it are annoyingly gooseberry fool. The spore drive is crap, Stamet's sickness is annoying and the Klingon turned into a human is bollocks.

The mirror universe is very well done though, the ending was great, Michelle Yeoh is wonderful anyway, but I'm expecting great things from her as an evil emperor.

Oh and punching somebody who has body armour on seems pointless.

Vaulting Ambition

Weird how the light sensitivity was never mentioned in any of the mirror universe episodes in the other Trek series. It's almost like Discovery is just making gooseberry fool up as it goes along.

This was half great and half dull. The Stamets and Klingon guy stuff was gooseberry fool. But the Lorca/Burnham side was good.

What's Past Is Prologue

The hammy acting from the evil versions is petty amusing, but the mirror universe is starting to outstay its welcome. The season finale is coming up and I hope they leave alternate realities alone for a long time after this season.

A good episode but it's time to wrap this story up.

The War Without, The War Within

Impressive how quickly they can terraform. Reminded me a bit of the Genesis thingy from Wrath of Khan/Search For Spock.

I can't even remember his name (Taylor/Tyler?) but strawberry float me his story is boring as strawberry float. I just couldn't give less of a gooseberry fool about him.

Making evil Yeoh captain, even as a deceit/temporary measure? strawberry float off, that's the most unbelievable thing amongst a mountain of unbelievable shite.

Apart from that though, I enjoyed this. It's always good to see the mighty Federation struggling and on the back foot. Not because I dislike it, but because it's always so powerful that it's fun to see them taken down a peg or two. Even if you know they'll win in the end!

Will You Take My Hand

How is Burnham still struggling to understand that Terran people are not the same as the people she knew?

With the planned genocides, Kirk rampaging through the galaxy, Section 31 etc etc, why is the Federation ever thought of as a peaceful and enlightened organisation? They are just as monstrous as anybody else.

Not a bad first season. There were storylines that I found boring or annoying, but overall it was decent.

I like the way the season ended. Evil Yeoh out there somewhere (she's too good to kill off!) and the promise of seeing the Original Series Enterprise. A great way to leave people wanting more.

Brother

"This is the power of math, people!". They really know how to make Tilly super irritating

Spock is a strawberry floating weirdo, even more so as a kid. Creepy little bastard.

It's weird how little of this I remember, it was only a couple of years ago I watched Discovery. I do remember (season spoiler) who the red angel is, but nothing about how she ends up as it. [inlinespoiler]

I enjoyed this episode, Pike's a good character which hopefully bodes well for when I get to Strange New Worlds.

New Eden

"A tardigrade?" "I guess you had to be there" "a highway made of mushrooms"

S2 throwing shade at S1.

May kept giving me vibes of a Belter from the Expanse. Looking up the roles the actress previously played explained why.

Solid but unspectacular episode overall. It's amazing just how many lost humans are spread across the galaxy.

Point of Light

Klingons who look like proper Klingons! And I don't just mean "they are growing their hair again"

I thought they might give [inlinespoiler]Michelle Yeoh a break for a bit, I was surprised she popped up. I wish they had actually killed Tyler though, I really don't like him.

The whole spore thing continues to stink this series up. Tilly is thick as gooseberry fool, as soon as May wanted to see the "very white blonde captain", it was obvious who she wanted to see.

There was some ok stuff here, but it wasn't the best of episodes.

An Obol For Charon

A reference to Prince and a Bowie singalong. I'm old enough to think modern music is gooseberry fool, but I find it hard to believe that the only music in 200 years time is from the mid to late 20th century. Still, it's much better than Riker's trombone.

Was there an episode in a previous Trek series where a dying alien downloaded all its knowledge to a Trek crew? No idea if there was or that one bit of this episode stuck in my brain.

The main plot here was good, Saru being the highlight. Alrhough it was bloody obvious they were not going to kill him off.

And I liked the universal translator malfunctioning, Trek should have used that far more often!

The Tilly/Stamets/new engineers woman plot was shite though.

Saints of Imperfection

Did the writers watch Stranger Things?

The mushroom kingdom was so bad that I was hoping Chris Pratt would turn up and liven things up. Yep, I genuinely would have welcomed Chris strawberry floating Pratt. This is a super relevant Mario joke in November 2022...

As you might have guessed, I thought this was shite.

The Sound of Thunder

This is a very good and a very bad episode all at the same time.

The plot is absolutely bollocks. Why bother mentioning "bending" the prime directive if you then just gooseberry fool all over it from a great height. The enemy aliens are dreadful. They went for creepy, but it just didn't work. And their voices were ridiculously hard to understand.. And it's just too unbelievable that an entire race would have forgotten that they "evolve" and that none would have survived the change in 2000 years. The bad aliens might have clamped down, but like strawberry float would it be that successful.

Which all sounds like I hated it. But I didn't. It went along at a decent pace, thoroughly entertained me and gooseberry fool bad guys aside looked stunning.

So it's simultaneously a 2/10 and an 8/10.

Light and Shadows

Is that a....white hole?

So what is it?

The Section 31 bloke ought to have a moustache that he could twirl while cackling. It's the only thing missing from the "I AM EVIL" character.

A so-so episode. As with a lot of this series it has some great ideas but just seems to get distracted or run out of steam.

If Memory Serves

Strange opening, I guess we're going to see some TOS stuff!

I really like Captain Pike, which makes me desperate to get onto Strange New Worlds.

Ahhh, Talos IV, hence the TOS opening sequence. strawberry float knows what I'd have made of this when I first watched it.

Why bring back the slightly boring doctor only to make him even more boring and annoying? Those strawberry floating mushrooms ruin this whole series.

The new Spock seems a decent actor, but he doesn't look/sound very much like Leonard Nimoy. It'll take some time to get used to.

Overall a really good episode. I like the callbacks to TOS (technically pre-TOS I guess!) and the whole thing was very well done. The doctor needs to go, hopefully he and the half-Klingon guy end up killing each other, they are both terrible.

Project Daedalus

They clearly wanted us to feel emotional here, but they have spent no time at all building up Airiam's character. It wasn't even clear until this episode that she was even human.

Discovery really likes stories involving somebody having their mind taken over against their will. Dull Klingon guy last season, robot woman this season. Actually Trek overall really likes that sort of plot, Data seemed to turn evil every other episode.

Not a great one, but I guess it's more setting up the next episodes than telling a story of its own.

The Red Angel

Are we supposed to be sad about the death of a character that said about 3 words in the series before the last episode? Either kill off an actual character or give the person you're killing off a few episodes where we might actually care about them. Or kill off Tyler and cheer us all up.

Michelle Yeoh is great. "Well in my universe, he's pansexual..."

This plan is stupid I get the angel wants to protect Burnham but there is surely a massive flaw here, they said the doctor would be there to revive her and so surely future Burnham will know that the doctor is there to resuscitate her and so there's no real threat to her life.

10 minutes on from writing the above and I think I must have misheard about the doctor, Spock seems willing to actually kill her.

I love that I've seen this before and remember virtually none of it.

Decent enough episode, plenty of silliness but it clipped along at a decent pace.

Perpetual Infinity

Kima from The Wire!

I hope this Control bollocks isn't going to end up being something daft like the origin story of the Borg.

I think I'm going to stop trying to understand this or predict where it's going. It's more convoluted and dressed up In technobabble than the most nonsensical Doctor Who stories. Maybe it makes sense to some people, but I'm giving up trying. Evil AI needs some sphere of data so it can kill everyone, we don't need to know anything else.

Good episode though, even if I don't have any idea of what the writers are trying to say. Kima was excellent.

Through the Valley of Shadows

Technobabble and mystic time crystals combine to make me think "stop trying to understand this bollocks and just enjoy the ride".

A nice callback to Pike in TOS. Although if he knows his future then he can surely avoid it happening to himse...MOGGY! STOP TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THIS!

What a shock that that guy turned out to be Control! Wow, so unexpected! Why does Control's voice change whenever it's discovered? Just for the "oooo creepy AI!" vibes?

The last few episodes seem to just be slowly moving us to the finale. I think it's a double episode, so I'm hoping it wraps all this gooseberry fool up nicely before (SEASON ENDING SPOILER) Burnham gets sent into the future. That's about the only thing I remember from this. It'll be nice to get back to Trek I haven't seen before, even if I remembered hardly anything from the couple of seasons I watched.

Such Sweet Sorrow: Part 1

"I thought there were no bad ideas?"

Does Burnham cry in every episode? And often multiple times. This show seems desperate to try and make the audience emotional, but I struggle to care.

After wading through a million goodbyes and emotional scenes, we finally got to some action and....CLIFFHANGER!

One thing why are they making us assume Spock is going with them? Either he will leave Discovery before it jumps to the future, or it will show us that Discovery has to return to its original time. Unless they want us to believe that TOS never happened?

Meh, this might all come together in part 2, but this just felt like they could have cut almost everything and just added bits of it to the season finale.

Such Sweet Sorrow: Part 2

This will be the last Trek I watch from a previous decade. Everything after this is 2020 or later! Unless I watch Short Treks, but they don't seem to be available anywhere and I'm not sure I can be arsed pirating them.

Spectacular looking episode. It really shows just how close to movie level effects TV has come. In fact, visually, it surpasses most movies. Although I think they pinched the zero gravity fight sequence from Inception.

Storywise, it's not as good. Plot holes you could fit a Klingon armada through. Way too much desperation to install emotional reactions in the audience and almost always failing miserably at it.

And overall, it ends the season in a place where Discovery itself should have started. Why set Discovery in the TOS timeline? I think they went through a few showrunners, but they should have either said "strawberry float it!" to Trek canon, or avoided strawberry floating up the canon by setting it after DS9/Voyager.

As it was, it felt like half of it was laughing at the earlier series and half of it was desperately trying to incorporate the mess it was making of canon. "Just give an order that nobody can speak about it!". : lol:

All of this was easily avoidable if they just set it 50 years after the 1990s shows.

As I predicted in the first part, Spock couldn't go with them. What a shock! Why even bother pretending, Spock could have just decided to stay with Pike in the previous episode. But nope, Discovery wants that emotion, even if (I assume) nobody gives a gooseberry fool.

Hopefully season 3 will be set completely 900 years in the future and will then be able to do what it wants.

Overall, it was a messy season. Some decent highs, some horrid lows. But mostly just ok.

That Hope Is You - Part 1

I see we are still having Burnham cry every episode I'm betting this British guy is going to turn out to be a Han Solo type. A lovable smuggler/thief who under the gruff exterior has a heart of gold.

She's gone 900 years into the future and she's shocked that the Federation doesn't still exist? Really?!

I love the cocaine spray thing, Burnham is actually funny for the first time ever.

This fight and the quipping is the most Star Wars I've ever seen Trek. I'm just waiting for Brit Han Solo to meet a tall hairy friend.

This guy's dad must have hated him. He's waited 40 years for somebody to swear him in as a Starfleet officer, why didn't his dad do it before he died? And he's so desperate he just believes the first person who walks in and claims to be a Starfleet officer

Ok season opener. It sets up the new world we are in, but it didn't exactly do anything too original.

Far From Home

Fingers crossed that this is a Spider-Man crossover

I still have no real idea why Discovery followed Burnham into the future. Just because they liked her?

Good to see bar fights are still around in 1,000 years. It was a gooseberry fool fight, but Yeoh was hilarious, I laughed out loud at the foreplay line.

As with the previous episode, I don't think there was much original or particularly clever here (parasitic ice? ), but I enjoyed this more. I guess having more people than just Burnham helped.

I predict the lady on the crew who keeps having pain her head is actually going to have something seriously wrong with her. I have no idea what that thing on her face is, something cybernetic? I assume it has been damaged, she needs it to live and there will be no technology in the future that can fix it.

Thinking about it, we are now on the third season and I have no idea of the names of half of the crew. That's a pretty damn terrible use of the supporting cast. I've seen people saying that this is the "Michael Burnham Show" (which is true!), but we really should know more about the people on the bridge. A big failure from the writers there.

People of Earth

Terrible opening. Voiceovers are dreadful at the best of times, but the way she narrated it was like she'd been away from Discovery for decades.

Yeoh's mushroom comment

Pose as a ship that got stranded by the burn? Umm, wasn't the burn supposed to have happened 150+ years ago? So they are going to pretend to be the descendants of a ship that set out 150 years ago, in a 900 year old ship that also looks pretty much brand new.

Pretty good episode overall as long as you can ignore the silliness and plot holes.

Forget Me Not

That dinner scene was amazing. And about time that Stamets was called out for being an arrogant prick. I still think something is up with the pilot woman (I still have no idea what her name is), and that it's much more than just depression/stress/macho pilot stuff.

The Trill and symbiont stuff was ok, right up until the trippy underwater weirdness. I kind of tuned out a bit there, I thought it was rather tedious.

This was the most "Trek" feeling episode of Discovery so far. Ironic that it feels like proper Trek even though the Federation doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Die Trying

I've watched up to the opening credits. They are all so happy that I think it's pretty much guaranteed that this "reunion" with the Federation is going to go horribly.

If the spore drive is so fantastic, why has nobody else in 900 years invented/used one? There's no strawberry floating way Stamets is the only person in history capable of discovering, building and operating one.

Terrans are biologically evil? strawberry floating hell, either the Federation is now made up of eugenicists or the writers are.

Why is David Cronenberg in this? And he was actually pretty damn good!

If the capsule holding the seeds just floats out of there, why did whole sections of the wall have to spin around and light up?

Not a bad one, although they seem to be deliberately keeping us in the dark over the burn. I can only assume it's leading up to a big discovery (pun intended) at the end of the season. Hopefully not related to some bollocks about some music that a few people seem to know.

Scavengers

150+ years after the burn and nobody could find out anything about it....until Super Burnham.

"You had me at unsanctioned mission" Michelle Yeoh is easily the MVP in Discovery

We saw how advanced holograms were in Voyager and they still have them here. So why the strawberry float would anybody bother with slave labour? Other than as a plot device to highlight "See! Look how evil these bastards are!"

I don't know what's going on with Yeoh's character freaking out. But I hope it isn't PTSD or the start of a growing conscience. I like having an outright amoral character, don't strawberry float her up by making her start to care.

It's a waste of time telling Burnham off. She'll always disobey orders and do what she wants. And she'll always end up being right in the end, because she's A HERO!!!

Unification III

Oooo I remember Spock trying to unify the Vulcans and Romulans in TNG. Looks like he succeeded.

And Picard gets a shoutout!

Why the strawberry float is Burnham's mum there? This could have been a great episode but it's going to end up being yet another story about Burnham's bloody family isn't it?

The more I think about it, the more this was completely ruined by her mum turning up. I could have gone along with it all, but that just trashed any suspension of belief and just made the whole thing ridiculous. A real shame, an episode on how Vulcan and Romulus came together, how they live together and why they fell out with the Federation should have been brilliant. But the writers just couldn't resist strawberry floating it up.

As for the Tilly story. strawberry float me.

I think I was a little off on the British Han Solo, he's now just a dull stay at home love interest. He could have been a fun character, but is now just set furniture.

And I still don't think there has been an episode where Burnham doesn't cry.

The Sanctuary

People hearing the same music, I'm expecting them to turn out to be fracking cylons.

Quite a poor episode, even if there was lots of action. The plot was thinner than the cheapest toilet paper. And what little was there was not very interesting.

The space battle was ok, but looked far more like Star Wars than Star Trek.

Meh.

Terra Firma: Part 1

I'm assuming from the title that this is either a mirror universe episode or is going to be all about Yeoh's character.

More eugenics bollocks, "a dying Terran will try and start a war!" as if their nastiness and violence is just encoded in their DNA. Still that's a minor complaint compared to the bollocks about "being in a parallel universe and time travelling", I'm not convinced molecules would give a gooseberry fool.

I've no idea how long the Disco gang has been back with the Federation, but the Federation hasn't taken copies of Disco's databases yet? Really?

Is every episode of this now going to be telling the Admiral "we need to go to such and such place!" and then arguing with him over why it's needed? It's a future where warp drives barely exist anymore, they have a ship that can travel anywhere instantly and Starfleet haven't thought of any uses for them at all?

A mostly gooseberry fool episode. I like Yeoh's character usually as she is at least having fun during the daft plots. But the mirror universe itself is just too bloody silly. It can be entertaining to see evil versions of the characters, but I'd be happy to never see it again.

I'm expecting this to not actually be the mirror universe though. My guess is the weird guy with the door is doing some sort of test to see if Yeoh has changed since being in "our" universe. If she passes, then he'll cure her.

Terra Firma: Part 2

This all boils down to "emperor has murdered countless people and committed acts of genocide, but she's ever so slightly changed her views so let's forgive her"

Such bollocks. And what's terrible is I could have written the above long before actually watching this episode. I just don't believe anybody would care about Yeoh's character like that. And it's bizarre the show wants us to "forgive" her, even though she's done strawberry float all to redeem herself, other than the most tiny of decent acts.

I might have believed Burnham had feelings for her, but there were zero reasons for anybody else on the crew to even tolerate her, let alone actually be emotional about her. Saru raising a toast to her when he knows she used to eat his people

Could they not afford Jason Isaacs or did he refuse to do it? It was annoying they kept mentioning his character but he didn't appear.

I can barely summon enough interest to write anything about the mirror universe shenanigans. They need to stop the mirror universe shite. The comic book (which is is a massive insult to comic books) evil is just too daft. I'm sure the actors have fun doing this, but it's just drivel.

The callback to TOS (I had to look up who the guy was) was dreadful as well. It'd be fine to bring him back, but that was so hamfisted.

But I am glad that my prediction was correct, although I guess that was pretty obvious to everyone.

Su'Kal

I can only assume that the Federation is now so tiny that the only remaining people in it are the Admiral and a couple of other people. Because this show certainly isn't showing anybody else.

This whole season should have been great and it's genuinely annoying how the writers have strawberry floated up what should have been relatively simple. 23rd century people go to live in the 32nd century. There's a billion different amazing stories that could be told with that basic premise. But instead, they are just serving up some gooseberry fool about "the burn", bollocks about the mirror universe and just treading water to (what I assume to be gooseberry fool) season finale.

The only fun character has been shunted off to another universe. Leaving us with a collection of anonymous characters (I still have no idea who half of them are!) led by Burnham (wasn't she demoted?), Tilly (worst number 1 ever), Saru (ok...ish), sarcastic engineer, annoying doctor, twat of a spore drive driver and the new character with their dead imaginary friend. It's not quite the heights of Bones, Data, Quark, The Doctor or even a strawberry floating Trip is it.

And the scary thing is I have heard Season 4 is really really bad. God help me.

Well, that was a long winded way of avoiding talking about the actual episode.

Nice to see Doug Jones out of makeup/prosthetics I guess. Although it made strawberry float all sense why he had to look human inside a Kelpien program.

The Kelpien bloke just constantly made me think of Voldemort.

A lot of it reminded me of a TNG episode where Riker discovered an alien kid who was living in a holodeck his parents had set up. Only this was gooseberry fool.

Another gooseberry fool episode. And that's being really really kind. I wish the crime syndicate would just destroy them all. And I don't like the crime syndicate.

The less said about the Burn the better. strawberry float me, my 6 year old could come up with a better story than that gooseberry fool. And I'm not joking.

There is a Tide...

Die Hard with a Burnham? I'm sure there's a better Die Hard joke, but I don't care enough to think one up.

The crime syndicate plan is "steal a ship, kidnap the crew and then ask for peace and an alliance". Really? Again, my 6 year old could come up with a better story.

And they spend an entire episode on that gooseberry fool before just abandoning it all. What was the point of any of this? Just an utter waste of time other than showing the Federation still has some principles and that the syndicate isn't as evil as we thought? Even though we've seen them be evil as strawberry float. Dreadful storytelling.

Positives:

The Admiral is really good. He should be in this much more.

Negatives:

Everything else. Especially the strawberry floating robots at the end.

That Hope Is You - Part 2

Weird to do part 2 of the season opening episode at the end of the season. I bet it doesn't matter though and this will be some bullshit about Burnham or Discovery being the only hope left in the galaxy.

What was the point of any of this? The music? Ignored. Vulcan/Romulans turning up? Ignored. Gray? Pointless without any explanation of what happened. The Burn? Just a load of bollocks hand waved away with incomprehensible technobabble.

Half of the episode was just a very gooseberry fool Star Wars without lightsabers or the force. The turbolift stuff was embarrassing, unless Discovery is actually a Tardis, just how are the turbolift tunnels so vast?

Burnham is now captain? Really? After all of her mutinies and disobedience? I think we all knew she'd be captain eventually, but the series has done strawberry float all to explain why she deserves responsibility for a crew. Saru deserved better.

This season opened up ok and I was excited to see what the far future would be like. They set up an intriguing premise and had everything there necessary to make a good season of TV. And then they utterly strawberry floated it.

It's so maddening that they set it up a jump 930 years into the future and made nothing if it. The crew just kind of fit in after just a little disorientation at the start. It's basically the equivalent of William the Conqueror showing up in Britain today and after a few days just fitting in.

I'm dreading Season 4. I'm hoping the hatred of it means that it is at least entertainingly bad and not the tedious guff that made up most of Season 3.

Kobayashi Maru

Not the greatest season opening of all time, but it wasn't offensively bad like so much of the previous season.

This goes for all of Trek and it's probably just tradition at this stage, but why is there so much explosive stuff on the bridge of all the starships? Every time there's a battle or crash, half the bridge seems to explode with fire and sparks shooting out of everywhere. It just seems so shoddily built with no care for health and safety.

Anomaly

I assume the reference to Picard is from the Picard show, because I don't remember anything like that happening in TNG or the movies.

If sending a hologram of yourself is as good as the real thing, why does Book need to go.

We were joking earlier today in the rewatch thread about starship bridges constantly exploding. This episode didn't break that trope.

"You have to follow my mark EXACTLY.... GO!"

"Are you sure..."

Idiot.

I knew they wouldn't kill Book, but I was praying they would. What a dull character he is.

The Gray storyline is beyond tedious. "You can give me an entirely new body...but will I age? Can you get rid of a mole..." strawberry floating hell, either come back to life or strawberry float off.

Not the worst episode. But it wasn't great and isn't giving me much hope that this season will be any better than ok (at best).

Choose to Live

Vulcan/Romulan space ninjas. And of course Burnham's mum is part of them. Because Ni'Var is the sort of place that would love to take in time travelling humans and the mystic ninjas definitely seem the type to welcome somebody like her in. Or maybe the writers just think it's a good way of building tension.

This show is so desperate to be Star Wars. Replace the swords with lightsabers and the robed figures fighting would have looked just like Jedi v Sith.

I can't be arsed to rewatch, but during the mind meld, I was pretty sure there was a blue glow around the planet when it exploded. Maybe I misheard what they needed to see it was mistaken on what I saw, but I was surprised when the Vulcan said there was no evidence of tachyons. Are they hiding the truth?

And what a shock Gray lived! Wow, I never saw that coming!

It wasn't actually a bad episode though. Better than the majority of the last season anyway.

All is Possible

Tilly's Teen Team Training Trip was shite.

But the Burnham/Saru story was better. Not great of course but it at least sparked my interest. It's massively far fetched that Burnham is always at the centre of everything that goes on in the galaxy, but that's what this show is.

Ni'Var wanting a clause to Niexit is an odd one, they already left the Federation once, is secession from the Federation now illegal but wasn't before? And you just know some Romulan David Cameron will strawberry float it all up for the Vulcans one day.

The Examples

My first Trek episode that is less than a year old! And I get to learn about mashed potato physics.

It was entertaining to watch, but the prisoners story was a load of bollocks. Those terrible insect mines! The prisoners preferring to die in the DMA if they couldn't be free. And what sort of totalitarian society allows prisoners to keep orbs that they stole from the person they murdered. And he's "thought about it every day", but never thought to give the orb back?. It's all very daft, but at least it's not making me dread the next episode like so much of Season 3.

The other story was a mix of decent and dreadful. The new scientist guy should have been toned down a bit, he was way too over the top. But it was nice to get some interesting Trek "science" stuff, rather than the bullshit the show has served up for so long. I don't trust him though, I think he's playing his own game.

The computer being "alive" and having emotions is interesting. They've basically ignored the sphere data, the computer and the intelligent robots. Hopefully it leads to a decent plot and isn't just forgotten again.

I'm going to regret saying this, but so far S4 has been a decent improvement over S3, it looks like the comments I've seen online are wrong. This isn't wonderful, but it's improving.

Stormy Weather

This show really really likes emotions. Burnham seems to cry less now, but every episode is desperate to wring emotion out of the viewer. Even the strawberry floating computer is now an emotional wreck and singing songs . And as for making the crew go into the pattern buffer while holding hands.

Either it made no sense or I completely missed something. The shop couldn't survive exiting the anomaly but the crew could survive in the pattern buffer. But Burnham could just wear a spacesuit. Huh? Maybe they just didn't have enough spacesuits but it still seemed to make absolutely no sense.

Interesting that the DMA comes from outside of the galaxy. A new villain? Or will it be someone/species we know?

I might as well just cut and paste my thoughts on the episodes. This season just seems to be "not terrible, but not great".

...But to Connect

Burnham has a strawberry floating cheek demanding anyone or thing follow orders.

It is weird that Vulcan (whatever the strawberry float it is called now) has rejoined the Federation, but Earth hasn't. I know the Federation was a joint creation, but it always felt a human thing. In this show, Earth seems very much like the Bush era USA. Very isolationist and simultaneously gung ho about storming into a fight against people/beings that they know next to nothing about.

Booker and the weird scientist guy are idiots. I'm assuming it'll either end badly for them, or it'll turn out that weird guy is not from another universe, but from whatever group/species invented the DMA.

The computer stuff would be far more interesting if it wasn't for Discovery's desperate need to try and force emotion out of the audience. As with Data and the Doctor, Zora is clearly alive and as such should be respected, even if the fleshbags are weirded out by it.

I don't need to copy/paste "not terrible, but not great" for this one. It was actually pretty good.

All In

It goes back to TNG of course, but Trek writers really like poker. I'm less interested in it.

It was good to see a changeling, I wonder what the Dominion are up to in this century? And the Borg! I'm actually surprised Discovery has resisted using either of them.

This felt like a filler episode, it never felt in doubt that Book would get the material he needed and it felt pointless to bring in the crime syndicate members, it was always going to end with Book v Burnham.

Rubicon

The title is either a reference to Caesar not being able to turn back, or they are about to find a cache of fizzy fruit drinks.

Oh look, crew member I barely remember is back! How exciting.

A lot of bullshit in this episode, it's beyond belief Burnham would be sent on a mission against her boyfriend. And Book is naive as strawberry float to keep on listening to Tarka and allowing him anywhere near the controls.

I am confused about something and I have no idea if they explained it. They keep saying that first contact can't be violent. And I'd agree usually! But the first context with the DMA/aliens here was violent, it was they that destroyed a world! Even if accidentally, they sent a mining "ship" (can it be called a ship) into another galaxy, a ship that has the power to destroy planets and that obviously doesn't check for life. They are either deliberately killing people or just don't give a gooseberry fool if anybody is in the way of their mining.

So with that in mind, strawberry float 'em. If their mining ship gets destroyed/damaged, it's their own damn fault. And if they are nasty enough to destroy a galaxy over a self-defensive action like destroying an unmanned mining ship, then they are nasty enough to come for us anyway.

Having said that, Tarka is a twat.

The Galactic Barrier

I seemed to remember Trek leaving the galaxy before, so looked it up. It was all the way back at the start of the Kirk era, with Gary Mitchell. Plus the Traveller in TNG briefly took them to another galaxy.

While there's more than enough to explore in our own galaxy, I'm surprised that in almost 60 years Trek has, for the most part, resisted the temptation to go to Andromeda or elsewhere.

1000 years into the future and they still have traffic jams.

We know just how long it took Voyager to get across the galaxy and I'm pretty sure they said the spore network is only part of our galaxy. So how the strawberry float are they going to find this 10C (do they like cricket?) species? Travelling just on warp is going to take them a VERY long time, even if the species is relatively nearby and they know exactly where they are. I imagine it'll just be ignored for plot reasons though.

What a shock that the DMA is now threatening Earth! In a whole galaxy, what a coincidence it heads that way just as they are travelling to stop it!

Rosetta

"Good to know the laws of physics apply outside our galaxy!"

Huh? Did Culber think they were going to a parallel universe?

The plot kept saying that they only had 20 or so hours until Earth etc get destroyed. But at no point did the away team seem like they were on a tight deadline. I understand that the writers wanted to ensure we knew this is a big deal, but they are dreadful at actually showing any sense of urgency.

The computer on Discovery is alive and can make its own decisions without having being told to do anything. But it didn't think "oh two people have boarded the ship....wait that's the two people we've been chasing....maybe I should tell somebody?"

I'm not convinced that "they value their children" is a very sound theory on the altruism of an alien species towards other species. Lions look after their own kids, I'm not sure that means it's safe for an antelope to go and visit...

I might as well just cut and paste my thoughts on the episodes. This season just seems to be "not terrible, but not great".

Species Ten-C

Star Trek: Arrival

Tarka and the general from Earth are a pair of twats. And Book is thick as gooseberry fool for following Tarka this far.

What a coincidence that they discovered the device in engineering at the exact moment that Tarka activated the plasma stream.

That mocking aside, this was one of the best episodes in all of Discovery. There was some thoughtful stuff here and (even if it ripped off Arrival ) it was great to see first contact with a species that doesn't communicate in the same way we do.

I'm expecting the season finale to be gooseberry fool, but this episode gave me some hope that it might actually be decent.

Coming Home

This wasn't as good as the penultimate episode. But it didn't strawberry float anything up either. It was predictable, full of plot holes and relied way too much on assuming the audience buys into the emotional feelings of the characters.

But, it was alright. Far from the disaster I feared and a lot better than so much of Discovery.

I assume that cameo at the end is why so many far right US people were so angry at the start of this year (2022).

It's fine to have emotion in a show, but strawberry float me Discovery goes way overboard with it. I am not a Vulcan, but if the show calmed down on emotional scenes, it'd be a hell of a lot better.

Season 4 was actually alright. That'll teach me a lesson, don't judge a season by half remembered outraged comments by Taf on Twitter.

And I've run out of Discovery to watch. The end of this felt like they thought they were getting cancelled and were wrapping things up. But I think Season 5 starts early next year, so I'm off to start the Picard show in the meantime. By the time anybody reads this, we'll probably be on Season 9 of Discovery and be looking forward to the new spinoff, Star Trek: Wesley Crusher.

I've finished season 2 of Discovery and so thought I'd take a break from "main" Trek and watch these shorts.

Runaway

Looks like I should have watched this before Discovery S2. But ultimately I don't think it really mattered.

Tilly is a weird character. I'd imagine most people will find her insanely annoying. But although she can be irritating, I quite like her. I know everybody else hates Neelix and I didn't mind him, so I guess I'm just nicer than all of you.

The episode was ok. Nothing spectacular but as a short goes, it did what it needed to. I liked the replicators going crazy.

Calypso

Short Treks aren't available (December 2022) on anything in the UK. Not Netflix, Paramount Plus, Amazon, YouTube etc etc. so I have pirated all of these shorts. All except this episode, I couldn't find it anywhere. So either this stays as my episode review, or I'll edit something in later.

The Brightest Star

Another episode I struggled to find. And when I settled down to watch it, I found I had downloaded a German language version. And as I don't speak German, this was a complete waste of bandwidth.

After searching, the German version is the only one available. I'm tempted to watch it and review it based on it being a "the universal translator is broken" story.

The Escape Artist

TOS Mudd was gooseberry fool, but I think Discovery Mudd has potential. But this wasn't the best showcase of the character.

I did like the android twist but it wasn't enough to save this from being a bit crap.

Q and A

I'm hoping from the title that this is a Q episode.

Sadly not

Meh. I guess as an introduction to the new Spock this was ok, but I'd already seen plenty of him in Discovery. The getting trapped in a lift thing was odd, was that a Welsh accent? And Mystique singing?

The Trouble With Edward

Edward reminded me of Barclay, an obviously intelligent man who's very socially awkward.

I get this was a comedy episode. But it wasn't very funny. Or interesting.

Ask Not

Pike

The best of the shorts so far. And it was very short!

The test was way too mean though. To bring her husband into it? After so many of her family/friends were killed? This enlightened future that Trek presents is rather brutal and cruel.

Ephraim and Dot

An animation set during episodes of TOS? This should have been amazing.

But it was gooseberry fool. At least it was another very short short.

The Girl Who Made The Stars

Meh.

And she didn't make the stars, she was given them.

Children of Mars

Surely if you are going to do a Bowie cover for this episode, you'd go with Life on Mars?

Another crap short. But I assume it's a lead into the Picard show as it showed him? Are rogue synthes (versions of Data?) the bad guys in that show?

Overall Short Treks was pretty gooseberry fool. It's going to be ranked below even the Animated Series.