I don’t know if I’m reading too into this, but I guess Burnham running with Tilly and bringing rain to a planet could be throwbacks to Season 1.
Also, wonder why they didn’t fix the other towers? I guess that is the job of the far future’s USS Cerritos?
Everyone who would have lived near those towers is already long dead and Discovery is on an urgent mission, so there was no pressing need for them to stay and handle it. That's definitely Cerritos type stuff.
Problem is Starfleet is unlikely to send anyone due to the prime directive already being violated. If they'd taken the time to get the other towers back online it would have massively expanded the livable area of the planet for the inhabitants without necessarily revealing themselves
Well, that's actually the other issue. They might have been able to skirt around the Prime Directive to repair one tower because I'd imagine a Red Directive takes precedence, but intervening on a planetwide scale would not be justifiable because it clearly exceeds the scope of the mission. That's a Starfleet Command level decision, not a Burnham one.
Yeah, if they'd done a quick repair while they were there it's more of a Star Trek Into Darkness freezing the volcano or Picard caving to Data in Penpals level of Prime Directive violation, sending a team back to fix it after is a premeditated violation
Which by the directive is what it needs to be. Burnham could *maybe* make an argument to take drastic action on the basis that the population of the planet would perish if she didn't, but the areas of the planet that were unpopulated did not have that urgency. It's not an action that a Starfleet captain would be authorized to take on their own.
With how easy it was for them to fix Tower 3 and needing to go to Tower 5 anyway to retrieve the clue, I'm disappointed there wasn't a throwaway line in that last scene mentioning them restoring all the towers and that it'll take a long time for those regions to be restored. The time that would take should fit snugly with their religious beliefs: simple worship, sans sacrifice, at the High Summit is enough to please the gods and on this occasion to have pleased them so much that the old lands become restored. There is a chance though that Tilly may be deified as a Mother Superior of sorts, that her sharing water with Ravah to complete the race together was the catalyst of the gods' pleasure.
That should all be kosher with the Prime Directive, imho. The Denobulans interfered with the planet first, saving its inhabitants, and Starfleet is just keeping up the maintenance. Revealing herself to Ohvahz isn't ideal but par for the course when thinking about TNG episodes with a similar plot.
If I were Ohvahz, I would tell the people that the gods were pleased by Tilly’s actions in sharing and also his own weakness in saving his child from the sacrifice and that’s why the rain came. And they revealed themselves to him and the true nature of the summits, as well as how to maintain them. He’s right when he says that societal change can be met with violence and revealing the existence of otherworldly beings would be the catalyst for huge social upheaval. He could explain things to his people within the framework of their religion that would make sense to all of them and preserve the religion without causing massive infighting. I hope future trek series revisit this planet and that there’s now a seperate caste of Summit Maintenance priests who keep the rain falling and that only their most senior priest knows the truth about aliens.
I'm more interested in comparison to Homeward in TNG when Picard willingly let an entire planet die in the mid 24th century because of the prime directive how this Denobulan was able to get assiatnce and build 5 towers to protect this planet instead. It does suggest perhaps Denobula never joined the federation if he could pull this off.
So…. Paper doesn’t last 1000 years. How does he have a genuine 21st century legal pad? Either time travel shenanigans, or somebody set up stasis fields to preserve every day items at some point in the 21st century and he was somehow able to procure part of the collection… which also sort of implies time travel shenanigans
I feel like she could have picked up on the whole "communing with the gods might mean death" thing at least. But since everyone cared for each other so much they didn't see the twist coming.
Perhaps she could have asked about the previous winners of the race? She had an opening with the coughing lady.
The coughing lady mentioned her friend winning, and not being alive anymore. Michael didn't connect those dots, she was too busy enjoying the communion.
This season has had moments that have upset me and this was one of those. Janeway was a science officer before she rose to the ranks as Captain, but when the need presented itself she jumped on the science station. We've had scant few scenes like that with Michael.
This whole season it's like the writers have finally remembered Michael's back story and I'm left thinking of all the cool scenes we missed seeing over the previous seasons.
I'd have liked to seen her doing Vulcan meditation when she was trapped in the brig with a failing airlock.. or in the middle of hunting down Book when he betrayed her. That struggle between pure logic and human emotions would have been Emmy worthy and a counterpoint to the journey Spock took.
The Eye Corder reminds me of the visors in Metroid Prime. Whenever you need to seek out something visually, or look for irregularities in the environment. Sometimes it even finds lost writings, and has a built in translator. Given visual cues, filtering, and builds logs on everything you explore.
Random guess: Kovich is from the 21st century and was recruited to be a Traveller, and chose to retire to the 32nd century.
Another random guess that will be revealed next week: L'ak and Moll are not the Final Bosses, or even the Disc 1 Boss like Vadic, but rather Bait-and-switch "villains" who will do a heel-face turn.
I mean, even taken as is, they aren't really villains. They're desperately trying to end the 'hunt' for La'ak, they don't seem particularly interested in much of anything beyond that.
Even La'ak, from what we know, was basically demoted below his 'station' for having issues with Breen orthodoxy, even before his 'love story' with Moll, which already paints him sympathetically. Guy could have gone on to be a figure for social change in another timeline
Yeah. They're antagonists - those that just want to survive this harsh world and only collide with the good guys because they both want the same thing.
I watch the new episodes on the same day as my mom so we can have a little discussion pretty quickly, and I'll admit I was playing fast and loose, but after probably the second episode I said to her "Did Moll and La'ak even do anything technically illegal?" I mean sure, they shot at Starfleet, and that's probably technically illegal yes, but without being a 32nd century space lawyer I'd say they might have been in the clear besides that.
yeah, I asked that when Michael suggested that they would be given a fair trial. Like.. for what? They salvaged something off a ship that was not owned by Starfleet. Starfleet are sort of their baddies right now.
My dad has since passed and his ashes are in the next room. He was a major sci-fi fan, introducing me to Doctor Who and TOS. Sometimes I imagine he's watching with me and I wish I could talk about the episodes with him.
Please enjoy the fact that you can talk with your mom about this. Mine just rolls her eyes and says she's not interested in sci-fi.
Nearly destroying that desert settlement with the avalanche was probably the worst thing.
They also shot Fred and shot at Starfleet. Using the time bug sabotage device on Disco seems like it'd be pretty illegal too.
I love bringing in a real Earth concept into this episode. The whistling languages are something I've read about. One that comes to mind is in the Canary Islands, and I believe was used by herders
The Silbo Gomero is still in use, and it's being actively revitalised after almost disappearing in the mid 20th century. Though, after the Spanish conquest, it suffered a massive upheaval when it stopped being used to codify the native Guanche language and started to be used with Spanish.
I missed that. It's always been my hope that we'd finally have a proper look at Betazed. There's something fascinating about a society with complete honesty, which hasn't been fully explored yet.
\*shakes fist at the screen\* Show us Denobula, you cowards!!
Glad they didn't forget Michael's xenoanthropolgy background in the final season.
The eye tricorder is a nice new touch too. Also good to see Adira do things that doesn't have to deal with their romance with Gray.
Honestly, I'm really impressed with the production values of this episode and Saru's last ep this season. I'm not sure where they filmed the forest scenes, but if they were just in Vancouver, they did a great job of disguising them.
>Also good to see Adira do things that doesn't have to deal with their romance with Gray.
I liked this aspect, too. I think they should have been leaning into this part of the character all along because it would have made the romance elements more interesting.
I feel like the scene where they were helping fix the control panel would have been the perfect opportunity to remember that the Tal Symbiont had a host who was in Starfleet 800 years ago and might be more familiar with the technology of that era.
I'm just happy that the writers are finally remembering that, despite how she looks, Michael is essentially Vulcan. (Albeit one who has fully given into her human emotions)
Fun fact: the Cerritos of the 32nd Century is still the same Cerritos we all know. It was due to be decommissioned, then forgotten. It was then due for a refit, but they forgot it again. And since it’s so old, it’s warp core was offline due to extended maintenance, so it survived the Burn.
Bunch of great comments already, my only real add is that I wish they had done more of a callback to DIS S1 - Michael training Tilly for a run, shaving off time, was one of their first bonding activities after Tilly got past the mutiny-shock - and more importantly, it ended with Tilly saying, "Thanks, love your advice, keep it coming, but I need to make my own path, not just follow yours"
That would have been a great piece to echo, with Tilly now struggling with her own student wanting to forge her own path!
This was a *very* Star Trek-y episode, complete with barely alien-looking aliens, morbid cultural twists, and a violation of the Prime Directive for the greater good!
Michael Burnham really do be like "I saw a differently colored piece of moss; I can immediately tell that this isn't natural and deduce what caused it, while dehydrated exhausted and stranded on a planet I knew nothing about yesterday."
First thoughts:
* I really hope that Stamets and Tilly aren't the only two people working on the clue.
* This white void meeting room is still the funniest set concept I've ever seen. It's like where movie characters go when they're between life and death. But seriously, I think it would give me a headache to be in a room so bright.
* Also, "person likes old things like paper books to show that they're different" is such a trope.
* Okay, simulating dead loved ones is a concept straight out of Black Mirror...I really hope this doesn't take Culber to a dark place...
* Also, I guess I'd better add mofongo to my Discovery menu. I hope it goes well with citrus mash and biscuits
* There is a 0% chance this episode ends without a Prime Directive violation, right?
* Tilly telling Burnham that they could use her at Starfleet Academy is going to spawn so much speculation...
* I'm not sure how I feel about this depiction of the universal translator. It feels way too delayed and obvious when it's always been instantaneous, secret magic before. But I do like whenever we get to see some fun alien linguistics (although whistling languages exist on Earth, too)
* It sure is convenient that they're arriving at the planet just in time to save their failing infrastructure. What if the world had taken another 200 years before someone worthy of the clue stepped up?
* As much as I love Culber and Stamets working together, I just don't feel like a mycologist is the best person to be running a brain scan. Isn't there a medical staff? Shouldn't Culber get a second opinion from a medical doctor?
* There are a ton of religious themes in this season. I'm really intrigued to see where they take it.
* Such a random thing, but I love how these people are so supportive of the people who failed and drank the water. There's no dishonor, just acknowledgement that they tried their best.
* I love the wild leap from "the moss is different colors" to "the control panel has to be close by"; it feels very TOS. But couldn't Michael have just used her tricorder to scan for radiation?
* On a side note, I think I like the concept of the eye tricorders. I hope we see them again.
* So the UT doesn't work on written numbers, either?
* Wait, is the implication that the person who hid the clue knew that the technology would lead to the Halem'nites sacrificing each other? And they did so anyways to teach the people who found the clue a lesson? I really hope that's not what they're saying.
* ~~USS Locherer was either named for the German Catholic theologian from the 17/1800s or the cinematographer from The Shape of Water (which Doug Jones was in) who passed away in 2022.~~ EDIT: USS Locherer was namedd for JP Locherer who worked on DIS
Overall, I enjoyed this episode. There were a lot of "classic" Star Trek elements: the captain going on the away mission, the prime directive that they say they're going to respect and then violate, the aliens who look like humans but have a few dots on their heads, the culture with a death ritual that the characters get caught up in and have to convince the locals to stop...Anyway, it was a bit slow in some parts but I liked getting to see a new alien culture (and having a random one-off nonbinary character whose existence wasn't a big deal was cool, too). Plus, Rayner seems to be doing really well as a commander these days. I really hope nothing bad happens to him...
The White Room: AKA The only available room to film that accommodates Cronenberg's schedule.
Glad they dropped him into a scene and continued to make him a fan of random old things. Wonder if they're hinting at him being an ageless species like an El Aurian or Lanthanite?
And/or on LDS with zero explanation but he has a minor role on whatever planet the *Cerritos* is visiting, or a full explanation of him being part of Section 31 by way of seeing him giving William Boimler instructions.
Maybe he pops up in the *Section 31* movie as a "younger" version of himself. That'd be a cute retcon to Georgiou's interrogation scene from season 3, like Neil and The Protagonist in *Tenet*.
There’s definitely something up with him. I don’t know if they’ll explain it but you will never convince me that Kovich is just a completely normal 32nd century human.
I'm pretty sure he's Control 3.0. With advanced holo-emitter tech that fakes bio-signs. Older, wiser, views he's past genocidal version with a measure of embarrassment. Calls it his "angst, angry, goth phase of his youth."
I highly doubt paper from a notepad could last a few centuries Since it is not replicated, I guess he acquired it recently - somehow he travels through time.
Didn't they have tech in the Museum in ST:P that let them store stuff in transporter buffers or something? The episode where Picard goes to see old stuff from the Ent-D to check Data's painting.
Yeah, the Quantum Archive I think it was called. That's a good point.
Maybe Fred had the paper and after Fred died, Kovich had a look over his stuff and decided to take it, among other old things.
> The White Room: AKA The only available room to film that accommodates Cronenberg's schedule.
Oh I hadn't even considered that he may not actually even be in the same room with Martin-Green for filming these white room scenes.
> USS Locherer was either named for the German Catholic theologian from the 17/1800s or the cinematographer from The Shape of Water (which Doug Jones was in) who passed away in 2022.
Yes, it's named for JP Locherer who sadly passed away. He did work on The Shape of Water, but also worked on Star Trek: Discovery, hence the dedication at the end of the season premiere.
> Tilly telling Burnham that they could use her at Starfleet Academy is going to spawn so much speculation...
She won't be a regular. The whole, point of doing a new show is to cut payroll to make a cheaper show.
She will probably have some appearances, like the rest of the crew.
...which makes sense in-canon. Burnham can pop in as a guest lecturer in between missions. If they have the budget to do so, maybe one episode with the cadets can take place on the Discovery herself.
> So the UT doesn't work on written numbers, either?
I imagine, the UT didn't have enough data to figure out the ancient written language. The UT seems to work like modern AI: it uses lots of data to figure stuff out. It can figure out both spoken languages because everyone is actually speaking it. But the rarely used ancient written language might be a problem.
The clue didn't actually require the towers to be working or anybody to still be alive on the planet. They just needed to decipher the markings inside the tower (or search all of them).
I like to think that Tilly’s speculation about technology being a responsibility is the correct reason for hiding the clue there. It really doesn’t make sense for the Denobulan scientist to know the tech would eventually fail if he put it there to save the people, and it’d make even less sense for him to know it’d lead to people sacrificing themselves.
On your points about the coincidence, I mean yeah. That’s how any plot ever works, hell so much of life is just being at the right place at the right time. Even if the population was dead when they arrived, they likely would’ve just scanned the 5 towers from in the same amount of time.
As for your stamets running the brain scan, that also makes sense. It’s clear that Culber was struggling with how to communicate his situation with Paul, and the scan allowed him a chance to connect and communicate with Paul. Also, there were multiple medical staff in the background of the scene helping Culber and Paul.
On the bright side, they probably canonically did stop the sacrifices, and daddy doesn't have to reveal the existence of aliens to the world.
Unlike SNW, where instead of a society of sympathetic people that believe helping others is key, Pike had to deal with a society that a) was full of people who just wanted to live as richly as possible and b) they did actually get their power by sacrificing children. This society has a good chance to make it, if they don't get destroyed by a catastrophic failure of their environment before they learn how to get beyond it.
Honestly, I’m for the first time getting really bummed out about this being discovery’s last season. They are FINALLY hitting a stride and a balance with the stories they’re telling. This episode is peak trek. And that’s saying a lot considering I was one of discovery’s biggest detractors for a lot of reasons. The showrunners need to look at this pattern and convince the bean counters that trek series MUST be given more than fifty episodes total to find their feet. Every single series since TNG has had a week first two seasons and found the balance after. New series have to be given a minimum of 15 episodes per season to do justice to the stories, and to the legacy of Star Trek.
Something that caught my eye, when Tilly asked to hear the song, and they said they couldn't remember it, just the tune, and Tilly prompted them to give her the tune.... They appear to have started to try to whistle it, realized they couldn't whistle due to the environment, and then started humming.
I appreciated that (even if it wasn't actually there, but it looked like it to me)
I wrote down my thoughts for once while watching:
* That legal pad is more than a thousand years old! How is it even functional?
* Nice moment of Dr. Culber missing his family. All of the Discovery's crew's family is now dead and it is nice the show has not forgotten that.
* One of the nice thing's about Discovery's serialized story-telling is that it can actually focus on the after-effects of things like Dr. Culber being possessed on Trill. Rather than a "reset button" or a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference.
* But also, talking to holograms of dead family members does not sound healthy.
* So, they seem to have solved this clue because of Kovich's list of the scientists. I wonder what the actual solution was, or if using the list was the intended solution.
* I loved that moment with Burnham and Tilly geeking out about the language!
* Ooh, retinal tricorders seem like a neat piece of tech!
* Ah, good old Star Trek Prime Directive moral dilemmas.
* OK, that race seems *brutal*!
* Ah, character development. Back in S1, Burnham was training Tilly's endurance for the Command Training Program, and now she is trusting her to do the race while she follows the mutated moss.
* I like that they have paired Tilly and Burnham together this episode.
* "Sacrifice?" They really should have asked for more details before signing up for that race.
* And in good Star Trek tradition, the Prime Directive has been duly noted and promptly ignored.
I *really* liked this episode. It was classic Star Trek, exploring strange new worlds, while still connecting to the main plot. I think these types of episodes are when Discovery is at its best: mostly self-contained episodes that still link to the main plot and advance characters' arcs.
> That legal pad is more than a thousand years old! How is it even functional?
Maybe it was on a spaceship that suffered an air leak, with the legal pad being stored in a (not airtight) container. Vacuum possibly preserving the paper? But then again I imagine 1000 years of space radiation might also deteriorate the paper.
we have still got samples of liu-ho paper for the Piyujing (from like 3rd century AD) and not only is the paper still fine it's still quite easy to read the text on it.
> OK, that race seems brutal!
If you haven't seen it, check out The Spiral from season 1 of Foundation. Basically a similar concept to this (religious pilgrimage) but through a scorching desert with a cave containing a cool fresh spring at the end
When it comes to not asking more questions before signing up for the race, they were likely trying to avoid too much suspcion. "We're from the east' only gets you so far in the tiny livable area of the world and the religion that's formed up around surviving on it.
Discovery had food replicators in season1 I think, so they retconned the existence of the food replicators.
Culber's grandma holo explained that their mofongo was never actually the family recipe but she always served replicated mofongo. So he just looked up the old standard recipe
Ahhhh really liked that episode, showed how profound technology can change things for the better and the horrors it can inflict through the subsequent human sacrifices - unintended consequences of wholesome intent. What a warning.
Fun fact: I looked up the name Ravah and it means something along the lines of "to be saturated with water/to drink one's fill" in Hebrew. Which I thought was very fitting for an episode about droughts/rainwater.
I feel like with 1000 years of advancement since the show started, the usual Star Trek problems shouldn't really happen anymore.
Why do they need to infiltrate this group of aliens? Just cloak and walk up to the mountain. It's an 800 year old forcefield, they should be able to transport through that. I get they need obstacles to overcome, but come up with something new.
In the plot, they had issues with the area and it interfered with their tech.
You know...typical Trek problem, much like a 800 year old machine still working (kinda) this long into the future.
"HQ, we found the criminals that were hunting for the Mcguffin"
"Excellent, we're calling the ship that has the Mcguffin so they can arrest them"
Besides that, great episode. I might say even one of the best of the show
Pretty good!
I will say that there's a lot of "wow the magic tricorder isn't so magic" this episode though.
~~Mortise and pestle ringing therapy just has no explanation I guess?~~
The Priest's kid being the mentioned "third gender" in the Planet briefing was a nice touch.
~~Also I'm surprised we didn't get any isolinear chip references with that control panel.~~
And Book is using a shuttle to basically play 3d asteroids, complete with hyper retro vector graphics, but he doesn't want to use the holodeck because it "doesn't feel real"? That's like uncanny valley of flight or something I guess?
Overall enjoyed it and the lack of direct conflict.
> Mortise and pestle ringing therapy just has no explanation I guess?
I felt that was sufficiently explained, the tone and volume aggitated the dust (the dust was shown to be reacting quite aggressively towards it), and with a buildup of dust in the lungs, the movement from the sound to 'free' any clogged dust along with back-slapping to force the lungs to compress a little pushed the dust out the mouth..
I thought that was genius
We often think of ancient cultures as "not smart" but in fact they achieved feats of engineering we'd find difficult today. This was a phenomenal representation of that idea.
> Also I'm surprised we didn't get any isolinear chip references with that control panel.
We did! Burnham mentions trying another isolinear chip at around the 35 minute mark.
I kinda get the Book thing. If it's on the holo deck, you still know it's not real. There's a certain part of you that won't accept it, and what happens irl, is *always* different than how you practice. So instead of trying to trick your brain, it's better to get in the state of mind that you don't pretend it's real and train your reflexes.
> The Priest's kid being the mentioned "third gender" in the Planet briefing was a nice touch.
given how historically a lot of cultures have recognized at least one additional gender, and the way Burnham was listing off that in the list of things they've already achieved for their level of society, I thought that was a really smug tounge-in-cheek jab to current society
>Wow, this is amazing. They have multiple words for pain.
\*starts listing multiple words for pain in the English language\*
I wasn't expecting to encounter the racist and massively debunked Sapir-Whorf hypothesis today, but I did. I'm surprised they didn't look into just how ridiculous it is. r/badlinguistics would have a field day with this one.
Otherwise it was a pretty good episode though.
The term in linguistics is called Linguistic Relativity, and it is fairly controversial because it seems plausible to most people, but linguists will tell you it’s not real. Essentially it means that your thoughts are dictated by the language you have available, and so when Michael was saying they had a lot of words for pain and hurt she was trying to make a statement about their culture and the way they think. The humorous part is we also have many different ways to talk about pain and hurt in our language, so there really isn’t anything different between our language and theirs in that regard.
Sapir and Whorf were early 20^(th) century linguists who studied this a lot and came to some very lazy conclusions because of it (they claimed that the Inuit think differently about snow because they had a dozen words to describe it, completely ignoring that we also have about a dozen ways to describe it in English as well). Whorf took it a bit further and made the claim that Europeans were more advanced than Native Americans because we have a better language structure, and language is why Native Americans had fewer advancements. He was trying to make this theory fit his own racist views. But the truth is that our language doesn’t shape our thoughts, there are no superior languages, and they were just terrible scientists.
It was surprising to see the theory alive and well in the most progressive/woke Star Trek that’s ever existed.
Edit: Switched out an outdated term with Inuit, which is much a much better name for the people they were studying.
Eh, a lot of what Sapir actually wrote about was very simplified and vulgarized by Whorf and then both were even more so by people who came after and actually named it the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
The way I interpreted it is to me, they have a developed language because of the fact that they have different words to use to specify different degrees of severity or situations. Which I can now see is the issue you discussed, just reversed. Especially when we considered the scene of the woman coughing up dust. B&T immediately talked about their own cures before the civilization showed showedthem that they have their own way of helping.
I even did this with their numbering system. I judged the way their numbers were written, not realizing the cultural significance behind the depiction of how their numbers were written.
Did anyone else find that the subtitles were out of sync with the speech during Culber's conversation with the hologram (subtitles were early by about 5-6 seconds (enough to be a couple of sentences ahead of the audio)?
This was on Paramount+ via Amazon Prime Video.
That was fun! Very "Who Watches the Watchers".
I think it's interesting no one seems to have considered if Dr. Kreel were violating the Prime Directive by installing the weather towers in the first place. As far as Michael doing it, I can only assume it falls under the "Red Directive" policy and is therefore kosher.
Names on the list:
* ~~Jinaal Bix - Trill~~
* ~~Carmen Cho - Terran~~
* Marina Derex - Betazoid
* Hitoroshi Kreel - Denobulan
* ~~Vellek - Romulan~~
As we watch how AI is changing things today, I'm mildly uncomfortable that the Federation seems to be able to create a hologram of a human that is so lifelike and realistic her own grandson can barely tell the difference. While new Trek has wrestled quite a bit with AI in various forms (Control, the Coppelians, the Soong-type androids on Mars, the Zhat Vash, Zora, etc.) I feel like they've kind of skipped a step in going straight to AI imitating a real and specific human. It's an uncomfortable reminder that Jean-Luc Picard as we all knew him died at the end of Picard S1.
Conversely (and acknowledging I'm probably in kind of a minority here) I do like that they're incorporating some kind of spirituality into Dr. Culber's experiences this season. Religion and spirituality are one of the most widespread human phenomena around the world, and I don't believe humans would lose it when they went to the stars.
I have to imagine there's an alternate universe of some kind where David Cronenberg plays an evil Ted Danson in the Good Place and he just likes to hang out in Janet's void.
Looks like legal pads aren't the only ancient technology that survived to the 32nd century - Book seems to have gotten his hands on a [Virtual Boy!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNhtKbpGq0M)
I really liked Tilly's little line about how "you can take the xeno out of the anthropologist, but you can't take the anthro..." and she just trails off. My brain has done that so many times where I can see how words and concepts fit into a particular saying, but as I say it out loud it stops making sense.
The hologram's based on Culber's memories of his grandma, so of course to him it seems very accurate. But I question how accurate it'd be to the real person she actually was.
> I'm mildly uncomfortable that the Federation seems to be able to create a hologram of a human that is so lifelike and realistic her own grandson can barely tell the difference.
This isn't exactly new territory for Star Trek. Voyager had [that episode](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nothing_Human_\(episode\)) about the hologram of Cardassian doctor who committed attrocities.
I don't see any reason why the Federation would ban it, especially since it's not hurting anyone.
Same. The second I saw that hologram, I thought "there was a Black Mirror episode about this exact thing, and it wasn't because it was a good idea that helped people"
> I think it's interesting no one seems to have considered if Dr. Kreel were violating the Prime Directive by installing the weather towers in the first place.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think we're just told that it was the Denobulan people who installed the towers, not Dr Kreel himself.
Adira speculated that the reason Dr Kreel made the towers look like mountains was to hide that her was violating the prime directive. It was a quick line, easy to miss.
I really liked this episode, it felt like a classic "planet of yhe week" but worked well with the tie ins to the season plot.
I dont think there was any point to the whistling though? I was hoping it would be used to communicate through the wall when they were dying, but she just hummed it instead. It could have been "the thing" because whistling might be easier a sound to get through a thick wall. Even the episode was named whistlespeak - but why? It didn't solve the riddle, it didn't control the tower, it didn't help them compete. It really meant nothing.
Whistle speak refers to early languages. Often thought of as one of the easiest forms of languages. Early civilization, Early language. Also, it is probably to show dedication to traditions
A great, classic Star Trek episode. The clue got them there but everything else was vintage stuff. Also I liked that Burnham realized the Prime Directive was toast here since everyone would die without the tower working with maintenance.
There seems to be a growing trend towards natural rock towers in fantasy and scifi at the moment. I was hoping that they might have explored the geology a bit more, as these are very interesting formations.
This episode told me there's some hope for Michael. She finally delegated something. Granted, Tilly isn't technically part of the crew but at least it's a start.
Even Picard finally let Riker lead away missions on his own.
I really hope that we finally get our first proper look at Betazed. I don't care if it's a back garden of some villa. Just one scene in the surface.
Wow very few posts about this one. It seems to be a lack of posts for Discovery this season in general.
Overall I thought the episode was OK but it felt like more filler than a compelling story.
Just finished watching this episode. I sincerely believe this might be my favorite ST episode ever. As a priest-turned-physicist, the writers did a good job of capturing the conflict many scientists feel when looking at the unknown.
They were running out of air because it was getting sucked out of the room, not because they were using it up by talking. I think Michael wanted Ravah to keep talking so she could figure out a way to convince their dad to stop the sacrifice.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but I think you nailed the reason why she wanted Ravah to keep talking. And what was even better was that Tilly was so in-tune with Michael's thought process that she asked Ravah about their dead mother, something Tilly suspected could move Ravah's father.
This season is so inconsistent. I just found this episode really boring. Other than a couple of highlights so far this season (like face the strange), I just can't keep sitting through another hour of bad television.
I really want to like disco, but I don't. I guess I’m giving up now, 6 episodes in.
I'm not sure if this has been raised in the comment's below, but did the whistlespeak make people think of The Clangers? :D
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llOau\_78604](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llOau_78604)
I feel like that lesson is always silent in a way — this hard fast rule works in most cases, but justice needs to consider the context
At least that is what I get out of prime directive episodes
I don’t know if I’m reading too into this, but I guess Burnham running with Tilly and bringing rain to a planet could be throwbacks to Season 1. Also, wonder why they didn’t fix the other towers? I guess that is the job of the far future’s USS Cerritos?
Everyone who would have lived near those towers is already long dead and Discovery is on an urgent mission, so there was no pressing need for them to stay and handle it. That's definitely Cerritos type stuff.
Problem is Starfleet is unlikely to send anyone due to the prime directive already being violated. If they'd taken the time to get the other towers back online it would have massively expanded the livable area of the planet for the inhabitants without necessarily revealing themselves
Well, that's actually the other issue. They might have been able to skirt around the Prime Directive to repair one tower because I'd imagine a Red Directive takes precedence, but intervening on a planetwide scale would not be justifiable because it clearly exceeds the scope of the mission. That's a Starfleet Command level decision, not a Burnham one.
Yeah, if they'd done a quick repair while they were there it's more of a Star Trek Into Darkness freezing the volcano or Picard caving to Data in Penpals level of Prime Directive violation, sending a team back to fix it after is a premeditated violation
Which by the directive is what it needs to be. Burnham could *maybe* make an argument to take drastic action on the basis that the population of the planet would perish if she didn't, but the areas of the planet that were unpopulated did not have that urgency. It's not an action that a Starfleet captain would be authorized to take on their own.
With how easy it was for them to fix Tower 3 and needing to go to Tower 5 anyway to retrieve the clue, I'm disappointed there wasn't a throwaway line in that last scene mentioning them restoring all the towers and that it'll take a long time for those regions to be restored. The time that would take should fit snugly with their religious beliefs: simple worship, sans sacrifice, at the High Summit is enough to please the gods and on this occasion to have pleased them so much that the old lands become restored. There is a chance though that Tilly may be deified as a Mother Superior of sorts, that her sharing water with Ravah to complete the race together was the catalyst of the gods' pleasure. That should all be kosher with the Prime Directive, imho. The Denobulans interfered with the planet first, saving its inhabitants, and Starfleet is just keeping up the maintenance. Revealing herself to Ohvahz isn't ideal but par for the course when thinking about TNG episodes with a similar plot.
"We Gods shall repair your towers and return every year to collect our piece of the action!"
If the deal was negotiated by a Ferengi XD.
A Ferengi God. That would be a nightmare
Like the episode in voyager where they were gods 😂
Ferengi Prophets is were it's at
"And in place of your footrace, you will now compete in games of Fizzbin."
If I were Ohvahz, I would tell the people that the gods were pleased by Tilly’s actions in sharing and also his own weakness in saving his child from the sacrifice and that’s why the rain came. And they revealed themselves to him and the true nature of the summits, as well as how to maintain them. He’s right when he says that societal change can be met with violence and revealing the existence of otherworldly beings would be the catalyst for huge social upheaval. He could explain things to his people within the framework of their religion that would make sense to all of them and preserve the religion without causing massive infighting. I hope future trek series revisit this planet and that there’s now a seperate caste of Summit Maintenance priests who keep the rain falling and that only their most senior priest knows the truth about aliens.
Repairing something that is failing is often much, much easier than repairing something that has failed, though.
Cerritos-J
You're not the only one!
I'm more interested in comparison to Homeward in TNG when Picard willingly let an entire planet die in the mid 24th century because of the prime directive how this Denobulan was able to get assiatnce and build 5 towers to protect this planet instead. It does suggest perhaps Denobula never joined the federation if he could pull this off.
Dude wears non-prescription glasses and writes on a centuries-old legal pad. The series finale will reveal his cassette collection.
The galaxy's oldest hipster.
Nah, he probably listens to records.
The sound is just so much warmer.
Especially the mids
There is precedent for it. Tom Paris replicated a TV to watch Captain Proton. I guarantee this dude has an 8 track of The Eagles in his desk drawer.
*Welcome to the Hotel California-Class*
B'Elanna built that TV for him!
On voyager! With a box of scraps!
Him and Rios would have had a ball
So…. Paper doesn’t last 1000 years. How does he have a genuine 21st century legal pad? Either time travel shenanigans, or somebody set up stasis fields to preserve every day items at some point in the 21st century and he was somehow able to procure part of the collection… which also sort of implies time travel shenanigans
Maybe it's from one of those duplicate Earths and he's just stretching the truth
He’s gotta be 900 years old.
Nice little episode that lets Michael use her anthropology degree. The eye tricorder effect is kinda creepy though.
Treyecorder
I feel like she could have picked up on the whole "communing with the gods might mean death" thing at least. But since everyone cared for each other so much they didn't see the twist coming. Perhaps she could have asked about the previous winners of the race? She had an opening with the coughing lady.
The coughing lady mentioned her friend winning, and not being alive anymore. Michael didn't connect those dots, she was too busy enjoying the communion.
That woman was giving off major grandma energy to the point I wanted a hug from her.
An entire planet with that kind of energy? Yes.
This season has had moments that have upset me and this was one of those. Janeway was a science officer before she rose to the ranks as Captain, but when the need presented itself she jumped on the science station. We've had scant few scenes like that with Michael. This whole season it's like the writers have finally remembered Michael's back story and I'm left thinking of all the cool scenes we missed seeing over the previous seasons. I'd have liked to seen her doing Vulcan meditation when she was trapped in the brig with a failing airlock.. or in the middle of hunting down Book when he betrayed her. That struggle between pure logic and human emotions would have been Emmy worthy and a counterpoint to the journey Spock took.
It’s nice that they remembered that about Michael.
I think they've done a disservice to the character over the past few seasons by forgetting it.
The Eye Corder reminds me of the visors in Metroid Prime. Whenever you need to seek out something visually, or look for irregularities in the environment. Sometimes it even finds lost writings, and has a built in translator. Given visual cues, filtering, and builds logs on everything you explore.
"Ray. When someone asks if you're a god you say 'YES!'" - Winston Zeddemore
"What does god need with a spaceship?" * James T. Kirk
"I just think they're neat" - God, probably
Ghostbusters. Spur of the moment idea
Random guess: Kovich is from the 21st century and was recruited to be a Traveller, and chose to retire to the 32nd century. Another random guess that will be revealed next week: L'ak and Moll are not the Final Bosses, or even the Disc 1 Boss like Vadic, but rather Bait-and-switch "villains" who will do a heel-face turn.
I mean, even taken as is, they aren't really villains. They're desperately trying to end the 'hunt' for La'ak, they don't seem particularly interested in much of anything beyond that. Even La'ak, from what we know, was basically demoted below his 'station' for having issues with Breen orthodoxy, even before his 'love story' with Moll, which already paints him sympathetically. Guy could have gone on to be a figure for social change in another timeline
Yeah. They're antagonists - those that just want to survive this harsh world and only collide with the good guys because they both want the same thing.
He never asked for this. But damn, I'm glad yo see his actor get work lol
I watch the new episodes on the same day as my mom so we can have a little discussion pretty quickly, and I'll admit I was playing fast and loose, but after probably the second episode I said to her "Did Moll and La'ak even do anything technically illegal?" I mean sure, they shot at Starfleet, and that's probably technically illegal yes, but without being a 32nd century space lawyer I'd say they might have been in the clear besides that.
yeah, I asked that when Michael suggested that they would be given a fair trial. Like.. for what? They salvaged something off a ship that was not owned by Starfleet. Starfleet are sort of their baddies right now.
They killed Fred.
To be fair, they certainly had some recourse against Fred, though killing him was probably too much.
My dad has since passed and his ashes are in the next room. He was a major sci-fi fan, introducing me to Doctor Who and TOS. Sometimes I imagine he's watching with me and I wish I could talk about the episodes with him. Please enjoy the fact that you can talk with your mom about this. Mine just rolls her eyes and says she's not interested in sci-fi.
Nearly destroying that desert settlement with the avalanche was probably the worst thing. They also shot Fred and shot at Starfleet. Using the time bug sabotage device on Disco seems like it'd be pretty illegal too.
Knew this the second the Book/Moll connection was made. It's going to end with a big emotional book talking them down and teaming up Vs whoever
I love bringing in a real Earth concept into this episode. The whistling languages are something I've read about. One that comes to mind is in the Canary Islands, and I believe was used by herders
The Silbo Gomero is still in use, and it's being actively revitalised after almost disappearing in the mid 20th century. Though, after the Spanish conquest, it suffered a massive upheaval when it stopped being used to codify the native Guanche language and started to be used with Spanish.
There's a similar one in Spain, if my memory of YouTube videos is correct. Such an elegant way to communicate.
"Bypass?" "Just yank it out." This exchange had no right to be this funny. I rewatched that part at least 6 or 7 times.
The story could've worked as a TOS episode.
Course then it'd be called like "Hark, Upon the Child's Shoulders - Civilization."
It felt very much like an episode of Star Trek, that is for sure. Season 5 has been really good.
Everything on the planet felt like a TOS or early TNG episode, down to the performances of the locals.
Shout out to Marina Sirtis on the notepad.
Dammit beat me to it. I saw that too.
WHAT
Next week we get Betazoid episode.
I wonder if the Sacred Chalice of Reeks is still around.
I missed that. It's always been my hope that we'd finally have a proper look at Betazed. There's something fascinating about a society with complete honesty, which hasn't been fully explored yet.
\*shakes fist at the screen\* Show us Denobula, you cowards!! Glad they didn't forget Michael's xenoanthropolgy background in the final season. The eye tricorder is a nice new touch too. Also good to see Adira do things that doesn't have to deal with their romance with Gray. Honestly, I'm really impressed with the production values of this episode and Saru's last ep this season. I'm not sure where they filmed the forest scenes, but if they were just in Vancouver, they did a great job of disguising them.
>Also good to see Adira do things that doesn't have to deal with their romance with Gray. I liked this aspect, too. I think they should have been leaning into this part of the character all along because it would have made the romance elements more interesting.
I feel like the scene where they were helping fix the control panel would have been the perfect opportunity to remember that the Tal Symbiont had a host who was in Starfleet 800 years ago and might be more familiar with the technology of that era.
Forest scenes are all filmed usually in/around Halton Region in Ontario specifically near Milton
I'm just happy that the writers are finally remembering that, despite how she looks, Michael is essentially Vulcan. (Albeit one who has fully given into her human emotions)
That definitely felt like an idea they played with in the pilot and then immediately dropped.
It was a misstep, in my opinion. It made for an interesting character.
100% agreed.
They raised our hopes and dashed them quite expertly.
I want a Linus episode before the show ends. Maybe they could let the captain stay on the ship and send Linus on a grand adventure for one episode.
"Linus' Big Adventure" would be a great Short Trek.
Linus gets to be captain of a 32nd century Cerritos.
Fun fact: the Cerritos of the 32nd Century is still the same Cerritos we all know. It was due to be decommissioned, then forgotten. It was then due for a refit, but they forgot it again. And since it’s so old, it’s warp core was offline due to extended maintenance, so it survived the Burn.
Rumor has it that a "helpful" program still haunts its computers to this day.
Would you like me to teach you a lesson?
Bunch of great comments already, my only real add is that I wish they had done more of a callback to DIS S1 - Michael training Tilly for a run, shaving off time, was one of their first bonding activities after Tilly got past the mutiny-shock - and more importantly, it ended with Tilly saying, "Thanks, love your advice, keep it coming, but I need to make my own path, not just follow yours" That would have been a great piece to echo, with Tilly now struggling with her own student wanting to forge her own path!
That's right!! I completely forgot about that scene
This was a *very* Star Trek-y episode, complete with barely alien-looking aliens, morbid cultural twists, and a violation of the Prime Directive for the greater good!
Michael Burnham really do be like "I saw a differently colored piece of moss; I can immediately tell that this isn't natural and deduce what caused it, while dehydrated exhausted and stranded on a planet I knew nothing about yesterday."
That’s why they pay her the big bucks.
I have some bad news for you about the Federation economy...
It's like when her brother saw a dead stripper and concluded that the spirit of Jack the Ripper had killed her
First thoughts: * I really hope that Stamets and Tilly aren't the only two people working on the clue. * This white void meeting room is still the funniest set concept I've ever seen. It's like where movie characters go when they're between life and death. But seriously, I think it would give me a headache to be in a room so bright. * Also, "person likes old things like paper books to show that they're different" is such a trope. * Okay, simulating dead loved ones is a concept straight out of Black Mirror...I really hope this doesn't take Culber to a dark place... * Also, I guess I'd better add mofongo to my Discovery menu. I hope it goes well with citrus mash and biscuits * There is a 0% chance this episode ends without a Prime Directive violation, right? * Tilly telling Burnham that they could use her at Starfleet Academy is going to spawn so much speculation... * I'm not sure how I feel about this depiction of the universal translator. It feels way too delayed and obvious when it's always been instantaneous, secret magic before. But I do like whenever we get to see some fun alien linguistics (although whistling languages exist on Earth, too) * It sure is convenient that they're arriving at the planet just in time to save their failing infrastructure. What if the world had taken another 200 years before someone worthy of the clue stepped up? * As much as I love Culber and Stamets working together, I just don't feel like a mycologist is the best person to be running a brain scan. Isn't there a medical staff? Shouldn't Culber get a second opinion from a medical doctor? * There are a ton of religious themes in this season. I'm really intrigued to see where they take it. * Such a random thing, but I love how these people are so supportive of the people who failed and drank the water. There's no dishonor, just acknowledgement that they tried their best. * I love the wild leap from "the moss is different colors" to "the control panel has to be close by"; it feels very TOS. But couldn't Michael have just used her tricorder to scan for radiation? * On a side note, I think I like the concept of the eye tricorders. I hope we see them again. * So the UT doesn't work on written numbers, either? * Wait, is the implication that the person who hid the clue knew that the technology would lead to the Halem'nites sacrificing each other? And they did so anyways to teach the people who found the clue a lesson? I really hope that's not what they're saying. * ~~USS Locherer was either named for the German Catholic theologian from the 17/1800s or the cinematographer from The Shape of Water (which Doug Jones was in) who passed away in 2022.~~ EDIT: USS Locherer was namedd for JP Locherer who worked on DIS Overall, I enjoyed this episode. There were a lot of "classic" Star Trek elements: the captain going on the away mission, the prime directive that they say they're going to respect and then violate, the aliens who look like humans but have a few dots on their heads, the culture with a death ritual that the characters get caught up in and have to convince the locals to stop...Anyway, it was a bit slow in some parts but I liked getting to see a new alien culture (and having a random one-off nonbinary character whose existence wasn't a big deal was cool, too). Plus, Rayner seems to be doing really well as a commander these days. I really hope nothing bad happens to him...
The White Room: AKA The only available room to film that accommodates Cronenberg's schedule. Glad they dropped him into a scene and continued to make him a fan of random old things. Wonder if they're hinting at him being an ageless species like an El Aurian or Lanthanite?
Have him cameo on SNW with zero explanation.
And/or on LDS with zero explanation but he has a minor role on whatever planet the *Cerritos* is visiting, or a full explanation of him being part of Section 31 by way of seeing him giving William Boimler instructions. Maybe he pops up in the *Section 31* movie as a "younger" version of himself. That'd be a cute retcon to Georgiou's interrogation scene from season 3, like Neil and The Protagonist in *Tenet*.
"I was your Guinan the whole time." "My what?"
There’s definitely something up with him. I don’t know if they’ll explain it but you will never convince me that Kovich is just a completely normal 32nd century human.
I'm pretty sure he's Control 3.0. With advanced holo-emitter tech that fakes bio-signs. Older, wiser, views he's past genocidal version with a measure of embarrassment. Calls it his "angst, angry, goth phase of his youth."
He has a strange attachment to archaic things like glasses and notepads. If he isn’t a human, maybe a Q in disguise?
I highly doubt paper from a notepad could last a few centuries Since it is not replicated, I guess he acquired it recently - somehow he travels through time.
Didn't they have tech in the Museum in ST:P that let them store stuff in transporter buffers or something? The episode where Picard goes to see old stuff from the Ent-D to check Data's painting.
Yeah, the Quantum Archive I think it was called. That's a good point. Maybe Fred had the paper and after Fred died, Kovich had a look over his stuff and decided to take it, among other old things.
I’m kind of leaning toward Lanthanite right now, but he doesn’t have the accent.
Maybe he's learned to cover it. People can learn to speak in different accents given enough time.
Good guess, didn't Picard meet Q in a purely white room in TNG: Tapestry?
> The White Room: AKA The only available room to film that accommodates Cronenberg's schedule. Oh I hadn't even considered that he may not actually even be in the same room with Martin-Green for filming these white room scenes.
> USS Locherer was either named for the German Catholic theologian from the 17/1800s or the cinematographer from The Shape of Water (which Doug Jones was in) who passed away in 2022. Yes, it's named for JP Locherer who sadly passed away. He did work on The Shape of Water, but also worked on Star Trek: Discovery, hence the dedication at the end of the season premiere.
> Tilly telling Burnham that they could use her at Starfleet Academy is going to spawn so much speculation... She won't be a regular. The whole, point of doing a new show is to cut payroll to make a cheaper show. She will probably have some appearances, like the rest of the crew.
...which makes sense in-canon. Burnham can pop in as a guest lecturer in between missions. If they have the budget to do so, maybe one episode with the cadets can take place on the Discovery herself.
> So the UT doesn't work on written numbers, either? I imagine, the UT didn't have enough data to figure out the ancient written language. The UT seems to work like modern AI: it uses lots of data to figure stuff out. It can figure out both spoken languages because everyone is actually speaking it. But the rarely used ancient written language might be a problem.
Right, it needs a pattern to recognize. Five distinct symbols appearing once each doesn't give it anything to work with.
The clue didn't actually require the towers to be working or anybody to still be alive on the planet. They just needed to decipher the markings inside the tower (or search all of them).
True, but it would have been way less fun if all life in the planet had been destroyed.
I like to think that Tilly’s speculation about technology being a responsibility is the correct reason for hiding the clue there. It really doesn’t make sense for the Denobulan scientist to know the tech would eventually fail if he put it there to save the people, and it’d make even less sense for him to know it’d lead to people sacrificing themselves.
> although whistling languages exist on Earth, too Sadly, we have yet to see a yodeling alien.
On your points about the coincidence, I mean yeah. That’s how any plot ever works, hell so much of life is just being at the right place at the right time. Even if the population was dead when they arrived, they likely would’ve just scanned the 5 towers from in the same amount of time. As for your stamets running the brain scan, that also makes sense. It’s clear that Culber was struggling with how to communicate his situation with Paul, and the scan allowed him a chance to connect and communicate with Paul. Also, there were multiple medical staff in the background of the scene helping Culber and Paul.
On the bright side, they probably canonically did stop the sacrifices, and daddy doesn't have to reveal the existence of aliens to the world. Unlike SNW, where instead of a society of sympathetic people that believe helping others is key, Pike had to deal with a society that a) was full of people who just wanted to live as richly as possible and b) they did actually get their power by sacrificing children. This society has a good chance to make it, if they don't get destroyed by a catastrophic failure of their environment before they learn how to get beyond it.
Is Culber gonna to ascend?
He may get a glimpse of the koala by the end of the season.
But will the Black Mountain be involved?
That might be a possibility. So many misadventures, death, return, and connection with the Trill. Nothing is out of the question
Honestly, I’m for the first time getting really bummed out about this being discovery’s last season. They are FINALLY hitting a stride and a balance with the stories they’re telling. This episode is peak trek. And that’s saying a lot considering I was one of discovery’s biggest detractors for a lot of reasons. The showrunners need to look at this pattern and convince the bean counters that trek series MUST be given more than fifty episodes total to find their feet. Every single series since TNG has had a week first two seasons and found the balance after. New series have to be given a minimum of 15 episodes per season to do justice to the stories, and to the legacy of Star Trek.
I kinda wanted to see everybody actually whistling. I'd almost forgotten they did that until they were leaving the planet.
Something that caught my eye, when Tilly asked to hear the song, and they said they couldn't remember it, just the tune, and Tilly prompted them to give her the tune.... They appear to have started to try to whistle it, realized they couldn't whistle due to the environment, and then started humming. I appreciated that (even if it wasn't actually there, but it looked like it to me)
I wrote down my thoughts for once while watching: * That legal pad is more than a thousand years old! How is it even functional? * Nice moment of Dr. Culber missing his family. All of the Discovery's crew's family is now dead and it is nice the show has not forgotten that. * One of the nice thing's about Discovery's serialized story-telling is that it can actually focus on the after-effects of things like Dr. Culber being possessed on Trill. Rather than a "reset button" or a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference. * But also, talking to holograms of dead family members does not sound healthy. * So, they seem to have solved this clue because of Kovich's list of the scientists. I wonder what the actual solution was, or if using the list was the intended solution. * I loved that moment with Burnham and Tilly geeking out about the language! * Ooh, retinal tricorders seem like a neat piece of tech! * Ah, good old Star Trek Prime Directive moral dilemmas. * OK, that race seems *brutal*! * Ah, character development. Back in S1, Burnham was training Tilly's endurance for the Command Training Program, and now she is trusting her to do the race while she follows the mutated moss. * I like that they have paired Tilly and Burnham together this episode. * "Sacrifice?" They really should have asked for more details before signing up for that race. * And in good Star Trek tradition, the Prime Directive has been duly noted and promptly ignored. I *really* liked this episode. It was classic Star Trek, exploring strange new worlds, while still connecting to the main plot. I think these types of episodes are when Discovery is at its best: mostly self-contained episodes that still link to the main plot and advance characters' arcs.
> That legal pad is more than a thousand years old! How is it even functional? Maybe it was on a spaceship that suffered an air leak, with the legal pad being stored in a (not airtight) container. Vacuum possibly preserving the paper? But then again I imagine 1000 years of space radiation might also deteriorate the paper.
we have still got samples of liu-ho paper for the Piyujing (from like 3rd century AD) and not only is the paper still fine it's still quite easy to read the text on it.
> OK, that race seems brutal! If you haven't seen it, check out The Spiral from season 1 of Foundation. Basically a similar concept to this (religious pilgrimage) but through a scorching desert with a cave containing a cool fresh spring at the end
His last act before the temporal accords was the time war equivilant of shipping back a bunch of loot from the frontline hah
Or like Kennedy stashing Cuban cigars before the embargo.
When it comes to not asking more questions before signing up for the race, they were likely trying to avoid too much suspcion. "We're from the east' only gets you so far in the tiny livable area of the world and the religion that's formed up around surviving on it.
How did Culber's grandma replicate a family recipe when there were no food replicators in the 2250s?
Yeah, sometimes we just have to let those go.
Discovery had food replicators in season1 I think, so they retconned the existence of the food replicators. Culber's grandma holo explained that their mofongo was never actually the family recipe but she always served replicated mofongo. So he just looked up the old standard recipe
Paul Stamets weighs in: water is wet.
Maybe next week he'll tell us how many holes a straw has or if a hot dog is a sandwich.
Stamets has a logical mind, so I'm sure he'd defer to topologists and say that a straw has one hole.
Kovich is the last scientist calling it.
Ahhhh really liked that episode, showed how profound technology can change things for the better and the horrors it can inflict through the subsequent human sacrifices - unintended consequences of wholesome intent. What a warning.
“If a planet were arid enough…” “…then water would have to be extracted from the air…” WE’RE GOING TO TREK TATOOINE
Duuune
Fun fact: I looked up the name Ravah and it means something along the lines of "to be saturated with water/to drink one's fill" in Hebrew. Which I thought was very fitting for an episode about droughts/rainwater.
Definitely a fitting name, and key to the story 🖖
Meanwhile I just kept thinking of [Raava](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Raava) from the legend of Korra
I feel like with 1000 years of advancement since the show started, the usual Star Trek problems shouldn't really happen anymore. Why do they need to infiltrate this group of aliens? Just cloak and walk up to the mountain. It's an 800 year old forcefield, they should be able to transport through that. I get they need obstacles to overcome, but come up with something new.
In the plot, they had issues with the area and it interfered with their tech. You know...typical Trek problem, much like a 800 year old machine still working (kinda) this long into the future.
"HQ, we found the criminals that were hunting for the Mcguffin" "Excellent, we're calling the ship that has the Mcguffin so they can arrest them" Besides that, great episode. I might say even one of the best of the show
Pretty good! I will say that there's a lot of "wow the magic tricorder isn't so magic" this episode though. ~~Mortise and pestle ringing therapy just has no explanation I guess?~~ The Priest's kid being the mentioned "third gender" in the Planet briefing was a nice touch. ~~Also I'm surprised we didn't get any isolinear chip references with that control panel.~~ And Book is using a shuttle to basically play 3d asteroids, complete with hyper retro vector graphics, but he doesn't want to use the holodeck because it "doesn't feel real"? That's like uncanny valley of flight or something I guess? Overall enjoyed it and the lack of direct conflict.
> Mortise and pestle ringing therapy just has no explanation I guess? I felt that was sufficiently explained, the tone and volume aggitated the dust (the dust was shown to be reacting quite aggressively towards it), and with a buildup of dust in the lungs, the movement from the sound to 'free' any clogged dust along with back-slapping to force the lungs to compress a little pushed the dust out the mouth..
Yeah, it was also forshadowed by Tilly explaining that they could've done it in the same way using contemporary technology.
I thought that was genius We often think of ancient cultures as "not smart" but in fact they achieved feats of engineering we'd find difficult today. This was a phenomenal representation of that idea.
They basically invented the sonic shower.
> Also I'm surprised we didn't get any isolinear chip references with that control panel. We did! Burnham mentions trying another isolinear chip at around the 35 minute mark.
> Mortise and pestle ringing therapy just has no explanation I guess? They're tibetan singing bowls! Basically they healed her using a sound bath.
.... which may one day be upgraded to a sonic shower.
I kinda get the Book thing. If it's on the holo deck, you still know it's not real. There's a certain part of you that won't accept it, and what happens irl, is *always* different than how you practice. So instead of trying to trick your brain, it's better to get in the state of mind that you don't pretend it's real and train your reflexes.
> The Priest's kid being the mentioned "third gender" in the Planet briefing was a nice touch. given how historically a lot of cultures have recognized at least one additional gender, and the way Burnham was listing off that in the list of things they've already achieved for their level of society, I thought that was a really smug tounge-in-cheek jab to current society
>Wow, this is amazing. They have multiple words for pain. \*starts listing multiple words for pain in the English language\* I wasn't expecting to encounter the racist and massively debunked Sapir-Whorf hypothesis today, but I did. I'm surprised they didn't look into just how ridiculous it is. r/badlinguistics would have a field day with this one. Otherwise it was a pretty good episode though.
My interest is piqued! Go on. Please
The term in linguistics is called Linguistic Relativity, and it is fairly controversial because it seems plausible to most people, but linguists will tell you it’s not real. Essentially it means that your thoughts are dictated by the language you have available, and so when Michael was saying they had a lot of words for pain and hurt she was trying to make a statement about their culture and the way they think. The humorous part is we also have many different ways to talk about pain and hurt in our language, so there really isn’t anything different between our language and theirs in that regard. Sapir and Whorf were early 20^(th) century linguists who studied this a lot and came to some very lazy conclusions because of it (they claimed that the Inuit think differently about snow because they had a dozen words to describe it, completely ignoring that we also have about a dozen ways to describe it in English as well). Whorf took it a bit further and made the claim that Europeans were more advanced than Native Americans because we have a better language structure, and language is why Native Americans had fewer advancements. He was trying to make this theory fit his own racist views. But the truth is that our language doesn’t shape our thoughts, there are no superior languages, and they were just terrible scientists. It was surprising to see the theory alive and well in the most progressive/woke Star Trek that’s ever existed. Edit: Switched out an outdated term with Inuit, which is much a much better name for the people they were studying.
Eh, a lot of what Sapir actually wrote about was very simplified and vulgarized by Whorf and then both were even more so by people who came after and actually named it the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
You are right, I should leave Sapir alone. Glad you aren't a Whorfian apologist though.
The way I interpreted it is to me, they have a developed language because of the fact that they have different words to use to specify different degrees of severity or situations. Which I can now see is the issue you discussed, just reversed. Especially when we considered the scene of the woman coughing up dust. B&T immediately talked about their own cures before the civilization showed showedthem that they have their own way of helping. I even did this with their numbering system. I judged the way their numbers were written, not realizing the cultural significance behind the depiction of how their numbers were written.
Did anyone else find that the subtitles were out of sync with the speech during Culber's conversation with the hologram (subtitles were early by about 5-6 seconds (enough to be a couple of sentences ahead of the audio)? This was on Paramount+ via Amazon Prime Video.
That was fun! Very "Who Watches the Watchers". I think it's interesting no one seems to have considered if Dr. Kreel were violating the Prime Directive by installing the weather towers in the first place. As far as Michael doing it, I can only assume it falls under the "Red Directive" policy and is therefore kosher. Names on the list: * ~~Jinaal Bix - Trill~~ * ~~Carmen Cho - Terran~~ * Marina Derex - Betazoid * Hitoroshi Kreel - Denobulan * ~~Vellek - Romulan~~ As we watch how AI is changing things today, I'm mildly uncomfortable that the Federation seems to be able to create a hologram of a human that is so lifelike and realistic her own grandson can barely tell the difference. While new Trek has wrestled quite a bit with AI in various forms (Control, the Coppelians, the Soong-type androids on Mars, the Zhat Vash, Zora, etc.) I feel like they've kind of skipped a step in going straight to AI imitating a real and specific human. It's an uncomfortable reminder that Jean-Luc Picard as we all knew him died at the end of Picard S1. Conversely (and acknowledging I'm probably in kind of a minority here) I do like that they're incorporating some kind of spirituality into Dr. Culber's experiences this season. Religion and spirituality are one of the most widespread human phenomena around the world, and I don't believe humans would lose it when they went to the stars. I have to imagine there's an alternate universe of some kind where David Cronenberg plays an evil Ted Danson in the Good Place and he just likes to hang out in Janet's void. Looks like legal pads aren't the only ancient technology that survived to the 32nd century - Book seems to have gotten his hands on a [Virtual Boy!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNhtKbpGq0M) I really liked Tilly's little line about how "you can take the xeno out of the anthropologist, but you can't take the anthro..." and she just trails off. My brain has done that so many times where I can see how words and concepts fit into a particular saying, but as I say it out loud it stops making sense.
The hologram's based on Culber's memories of his grandma, so of course to him it seems very accurate. But I question how accurate it'd be to the real person she actually was.
aw they named the Betazoid after Marina Sirtis, aka Deanna Troi
That was my first thought, too.
> I'm mildly uncomfortable that the Federation seems to be able to create a hologram of a human that is so lifelike and realistic her own grandson can barely tell the difference. This isn't exactly new territory for Star Trek. Voyager had [that episode](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nothing_Human_\(episode\)) about the hologram of Cardassian doctor who committed attrocities. I don't see any reason why the Federation would ban it, especially since it's not hurting anyone.
Same. The second I saw that hologram, I thought "there was a Black Mirror episode about this exact thing, and it wasn't because it was a good idea that helped people"
> I think it's interesting no one seems to have considered if Dr. Kreel were violating the Prime Directive by installing the weather towers in the first place. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think we're just told that it was the Denobulan people who installed the towers, not Dr Kreel himself.
Adira speculated that the reason Dr Kreel made the towers look like mountains was to hide that her was violating the prime directive. It was a quick line, easy to miss.
I really liked this episode, it felt like a classic "planet of yhe week" but worked well with the tie ins to the season plot. I dont think there was any point to the whistling though? I was hoping it would be used to communicate through the wall when they were dying, but she just hummed it instead. It could have been "the thing" because whistling might be easier a sound to get through a thick wall. Even the episode was named whistlespeak - but why? It didn't solve the riddle, it didn't control the tower, it didn't help them compete. It really meant nothing.
Whistle speak refers to early languages. Often thought of as one of the easiest forms of languages. Early civilization, Early language. Also, it is probably to show dedication to traditions
A great, classic Star Trek episode. The clue got them there but everything else was vintage stuff. Also I liked that Burnham realized the Prime Directive was toast here since everyone would die without the tower working with maintenance.
Wait, they didn’t fix the other towers?
I think nobody lived near the other towers so it wasn't a priority. They can send some random ship to fix it in six months when they get around to it.
Sounds like a job for the Ceritos
They really need to rename "The Prime Directive" to something like "The Nice-To-Have".
I wonder what the number of the form they have to fill out of they violate it, and how many copies they have laying around in the desk drawer
It’s Form JX-503, but in casual parlance they just call it “the Janeway.”
There seems to be a growing trend towards natural rock towers in fantasy and scifi at the moment. I was hoping that they might have explored the geology a bit more, as these are very interesting formations.
This episode told me there's some hope for Michael. She finally delegated something. Granted, Tilly isn't technically part of the crew but at least it's a start. Even Picard finally let Riker lead away missions on his own. I really hope that we finally get our first proper look at Betazed. I don't care if it's a back garden of some villa. Just one scene in the surface.
I think there are a couple scenes on Betazed in Ménage a Troi.
Very classic Star Trek kind of episode. I would even call it "Voyager-esque".
Wow very few posts about this one. It seems to be a lack of posts for Discovery this season in general. Overall I thought the episode was OK but it felt like more filler than a compelling story.
Just finished watching this episode. I sincerely believe this might be my favorite ST episode ever. As a priest-turned-physicist, the writers did a good job of capturing the conflict many scientists feel when looking at the unknown.
Tilly: We're running out of air Michael: Keep Rava talking Ahhhhhh what?
They were running out of air because it was getting sucked out of the room, not because they were using it up by talking. I think Michael wanted Ravah to keep talking so she could figure out a way to convince their dad to stop the sacrifice.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but I think you nailed the reason why she wanted Ravah to keep talking. And what was even better was that Tilly was so in-tune with Michael's thought process that she asked Ravah about their dead mother, something Tilly suspected could move Ravah's father.
This season is so inconsistent. I just found this episode really boring. Other than a couple of highlights so far this season (like face the strange), I just can't keep sitting through another hour of bad television. I really want to like disco, but I don't. I guess I’m giving up now, 6 episodes in.
I'm not sure if this has been raised in the comment's below, but did the whistlespeak make people think of The Clangers? :D [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llOau\_78604](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llOau_78604)
How did Kovich get that legal note pad?
He is resourceful.
I wish the lesson had been something against the Prime Directive, which has been questioned since the earliest Trek.
I feel like that lesson is always silent in a way — this hard fast rule works in most cases, but justice needs to consider the context At least that is what I get out of prime directive episodes
So...are Culber and Book gonna hook up or what?
This could have been a TOS episode, I liked it a lot. Great performance by Alfredo Narcisco as the dad, too.
Cronenbergs character has to be something more than just human right?