1.14 "The War Without, The War Within"
Back in the prime universe, the Discovery crew find that the Federation is losing the war with the Klingons. Burnham, with the help of Emperor Georgiou, comes up with a plan to defeat the Klingons by...jumping inside of Qo'NoS?
That can't be right *double checks notes*
Yep no that's what the plan is. They are going to use the spore drive to jump into a huge cavern under the surface. Who comes up with these plots? This is screeching maniacal nonsense.
THE GOOD
-Lots of scenes with Georgiou and/or Sarek. Both are good characters. The scene of them alone was the best one of the ep.
THE BAD
-Stupid, stupid plot.
-The scene where they grow the spore colony in a matter of minutes is just dumb. "Fire the EM darts." Um, what? I would have been less upset if they had just reversed the polarity and called it a day.
-Still can't bring myself to care at all about the Tyler/Burnham stuff. They have zero, I mean ZERO chemistry.
-Going off that, I feel bad for the great actors like Yeoh, Latif, and especially James Frain who consistently give high quality performances and get jack diddly to work with from Martin-Green. In the scene where Sarek says goodbye to Burnham, Frain does an incredible job of toeing the line between Sarek's Vulcan stoicism and his strong but mostly hidden affection for his adopted daughter. Meanwhile, Martin-Green could have been replaced by a cardboard box in that scene and it would have changed nothing. What a terrible lead she has been so far.
THE UGLY
-Jason Isaac's name is still in the main credits sequence but he doesn't appear in the ep. Will be interested to see if he returns to the show in some form.
-I hate these "one strike to their home planet will end the war" plots. As a big student of history, I know that real wars NEVER work that way. London had the absolute hell bombed out of it during WWII but that didn't defeat the Brits. You win wars with superior resources, strategy, and technology. If, as a science fiction showrunner you are not prepared to show war how it really exists, there's a simple solution for that: DON'T WRITE WARS INTO YOUR SHOW. DS9 was willing to tackle the realities of war with the multiyear Dominion War storyline, and the show thrived because of that. But Star Trek is not supposed to be about wars, so unless you are willing to commit to it in the same way that show did, you should simply not write wars into the show.
Back in the prime universe, the Discovery crew find that the Federation is losing the war with the Klingons. Burnham, with the help of Emperor Georgiou, comes up with a plan to defeat the Klingons by...jumping inside of Qo'NoS?
That can't be right *double checks notes*
Yep no that's what the plan is. They are going to use the spore drive to jump into a huge cavern under the surface. Who comes up with these plots? This is screeching maniacal nonsense.
THE GOOD
-Lots of scenes with Georgiou and/or Sarek. Both are good characters. The scene of them alone was the best one of the ep.
THE BAD
-Stupid, stupid plot.
-The scene where they grow the spore colony in a matter of minutes is just dumb. "Fire the EM darts." Um, what? I would have been less upset if they had just reversed the polarity and called it a day.
-Still can't bring myself to care at all about the Tyler/Burnham stuff. They have zero, I mean ZERO chemistry.
-Going off that, I feel bad for the great actors like Yeoh, Latif, and especially James Frain who consistently give high quality performances and get jack diddly to work with from Martin-Green. In the scene where Sarek says goodbye to Burnham, Frain does an incredible job of toeing the line between Sarek's Vulcan stoicism and his strong but mostly hidden affection for his adopted daughter. Meanwhile, Martin-Green could have been replaced by a cardboard box in that scene and it would have changed nothing. What a terrible lead she has been so far.
THE UGLY
-Jason Isaac's name is still in the main credits sequence but he doesn't appear in the ep. Will be interested to see if he returns to the show in some form.
-I hate these "one strike to their home planet will end the war" plots. As a big student of history, I know that real wars NEVER work that way. London had the absolute hell bombed out of it during WWII but that didn't defeat the Brits. You win wars with superior resources, strategy, and technology. If, as a science fiction showrunner you are not prepared to show war how it really exists, there's a simple solution for that: DON'T WRITE WARS INTO YOUR SHOW. DS9 was willing to tackle the realities of war with the multiyear Dominion War storyline, and the show thrived because of that. But Star Trek is not supposed to be about wars, so unless you are willing to commit to it in the same way that show did, you should simply not write wars into the show.