#Discovery finale

[biblioflyer]

To boldly go backwards?

Unpacking the attitudes behind people burned by Burnham. No, not those people. The other people. The ones who authentically seem to care about something other than protecting their image of Columbus as a cool dude.

This will be a series. If you’re reading this on the day it escaped my queue, the rest are queued for a 1 a day. If not, all will have the ‘Star Trek ethics’ tag in common. If I’m really on the ball, I’ll come back later and edit in links to the other chapters here.

I can see it now. Enterprise had its 1701-D cameos, Star Trek Picard had its Enterprise-G moment, and now Discovery’s finale will likely be controversial on the basis of Burnham placing the Progenitor’s technology out of reach of pretty much everyone. There will be many different ways of contemplating this, but I think you can sum it up as:

Did Discovery “give in” to techno-pessimism and in doing so undermine a core theme of Star Trek?

I don’t personally think so, but you might and I think I know why. Burnham is kind of, sort of applying a reverse Prime Directive on the Federation. She comes away believing that the Progenitor tech should not be entrusted to one person or even one civilization, and that ultimately it's unnecessary. So she “throws it away.” 

By throw it away, I mean she has it yeeted into a Black Hole where theoretically more advanced civilizations than the Federation can access it if and when it comes to it, but by that point it will likely be more of an anthropological curiosity to them rather than a new technological singularity.

Thus, the series finale of Discovery is one in which some observers might feel that a core premise of Star Trek, that of techno-optimism, is betrayed. While the grousing I think is likely to be hyperbolic, not all of it is necessarily a mask for something more nasty, feral, and likely to get a person kicked off any reasonably well moderated platform if expressed in the open.

What you think the core values of Star Trek are may actually be just that: a different understanding of what the core values are, and thus a different understanding of when they have or have not been undermined. I have my own take on those values.

For instance I despise Section 31 as a concept and storytelling device, believe it has directly attacked one of the most important core conceits of the setting: its fundamental optimism, and the damage this embrace of cynicism has done is continuing to ripple through Trek into the present day.

Yet at the same time, I also understand Trek as a set of modern fables, that the Federation is not a real place, and that it has a narrative function. That function being to model becoming aware of and confronting that which we should find repugnant and unacceptable in our own society if we were not desensitized to it.

Thus Burnham’s choice is one that can be read a few different ways, and that’s without getting into whether it was satisfying as a climax. While it is often derisively referred to as “NuTrek”, a label that both describes a worldview and a storytelling style anathema to those who prefer the more professional affectations, high regard for Classical Education, and “competency porn” of TOS & TNG or the more “neo-realist” shades of gray of DS9; Discovery is in many ways a fusion of the Treks of yesteryear. 

Sometimes it can be a lot closer to The Original Series in worldview than one might imagine in its willingness to indulge moral gray zones: “the Vulcan Hello” being a prime example. Other times it affirms the TNG obsession with personal and civilizational virtues as a thing one actively commits to upholding even when there are tremendous, even transformative benefits to be reaped by conceding. The refusal of the Progenitor tech being one of those examples.

This is something I’m going to unpack in subsequent posts in an attempt to try to sidestep some of the nastier fissures in the fandom and uncover what I think may be a genuine difference in the worldviews and orientations of some fans rather than, at best a distaste for the story structures and affectations of Discovery, and at its worst naked hostility to a crew that isn’t predominantly Anglo-European, heterosexual, and male. 

Next: What is the Kirkian ideal?

[hypnoticcastiel]

Making of Star Trek: Discovery (spoiler-alert for some of us?!), and a short 1st reaction bc i still have questions. First of all, i admit that i couldn't have the same feels as with my younger years Trek shows, sometimes felt lost in subplots or characters remained rather at arms length, it's just a personal thing. I applaud the dedicated people and amazing look of this show. There are big movies with not much better visuals, so Trek made a big step since the early stuff. I enjoyed the finale but wonder why such a cosmic adventure was not split into a 2-part finale. My q:

If the Dr. Kovich chara was such a big reveal next to the memorabilia items in his office, what exactly was his influence like in general. Bc i don't see or understood any of the big adventure as having a wow-that's it sort of connection to his actual origin in the S5 finale reveal.

If the Breen were so super powerful of an antagonist, how was Action*Saru able to make an entire fleet retreat, with or without a bluff scheme whatever. The Breen faction leader traveled to the spot where the Moll-Breen alliance was said OR rumored to acquire a valuable asset, didn't she say it to Saru just minutes before she retreats?! It was all a bit too much for me to follow.

Was the entire 20+ years time jump an actual experience of Burnham while in HER NORMAL time (making her super-human or awaken special powers), or was it an illusion given to her after the progenitor told her that she gets to decide what to do with the tech? Bc it's easier for a human to make decisions when there is some more concrete idea or info about how a person's life would develop and look like. On the other hand, fear and uncertainty would lead some (maybe not Burnham but some of the others) to make different decisions. And how did the Starfleet higher ups just accept what Burnham felt?! The entire thing was a mission that would make or break the galactic power dynamics at that time and nothing would have prevented the leadership from deciding to safeguard and analyze the ancient tech after Burnham and Moll were saved. That somehow takes away from the high stakes adventure feels that S5 established. None of the happy end events would change how dangerous or hostile other powers would continue to oppose the starfleet federation project.

Why did Burnham only tell HALF THE TRUTH about the tech to Moll. She complete ignored to tell Moll that Lak's body can be brought back without trouble, only the memory would be lost. Regardless of Moll's decision what to do, this missing info looks like a little cheat, so that they hurry up and leave the tech station. That is the opposite of how a trustworthy ally would act, and B. insisted that Moll can trust her during the mission.

[teaktty]

I'm going to rewatch the Discovery finale soon, anyone want to live watch it with me?

either with messages or vc?

i'll wait 30 mins before I start, unless anyone is fast

[theotterpenguin]

it’s always “let aang swear” or “let zuko swear” but y’all are missing out on the comedic potential of katara being the one who has the dirtiest mouth. she swears like a sailor but is just better at hiding it than everyone else because she doesn't want to influence aang or toph, and tries to keep up pretenses of being proper.

after all the time they spent fighting each other as enemies and sparring as friends, zuko’s the only one that knows this about her but no one believes him.

(for those who question where katara could possibly learn to curse, i ask - have you ever assisted women through childbirth in a world where epidurals don't exist? katara has. like c'mon. she knows all the swear words).

[spkyart]

Under the red sky

[daydreamerwonderkid]

All Tim does is eat hot potato chip and lie.

You do NOT have permission to repost my art.

[trekkie-polls]

For bonus points share one thing you wish would have happened in that extra season

Edit: So many comments about Prodigy not being on here! Well, I am a Prodigy fan too. But I left it off because last I heard Netflix picked it up. Now I don’t have faith it will happen, but nonetheless there is at least one more season planned and maybe more.

On the other hand, even though the last seasons of discovery & lower decks haven’t finished airing, they both have planned end dates.

[bleue-flora]

[context]

OMG!!!! I found it! It's Sam's base! (coords: -3803 / 70 / -3926)

Of course he would have that on his wall! duh.

One mystery actually freaking solved. Let's goooo!!!!!

[trek-tracks]

Sarek REALLY regrets teaching his children this

[poebrey]

Imagine getting adopted after your parents were brutally murdered through circumstances that were seemingly your fault, being told that it was so you could serve as both an experiment (for your foster father to prove humans could follow Vulcan teachings) and a tool (for your foster brother’s development), seemingly failing both of them, then later being told by your foster mother who you thought you had a healthy relationship with that the reason you were given as much love and affection as you were when you were a child was because it had to be denied to the child she really wanted to give it to, her real child. Oh and that she thought you were the reason your family was falling apart. Michael is a better person than me because I would’ve said fuck everyone and taken a nap.

[robbiebear540]

Happy Star Trek Day!

[biblioflyer]

Picardism

This is part of a series analyzing the finale of Discovery and the conflict between different aspects of the Star Trek fandom. This is in part inspired by and a reaction to a conversation between Andrew Heaton and Tim Shandefur on the Political Orphanage podcast. For more like this, use the Star Trek ethics tag.

I’m going to do my best to present a steelmanned version of what Sandefur’s critiques of the TNG era of Trek are (and this overlaps with Undiscovered Country because while they are a century apart in Trek continuity, they are contemporaries as far as the society and social thought that produced them as stories.) This will be challenging because, to be honest, I found him much less fair and cogent when it came to TNG.

His two big gripes are cultural relativism and techno pessimism.

The cultural relativism is expressed through the much stricter interpretation of the Prime Directive that is in practice in TNG. The sort of interpretation that makes it incredibly difficult, absent some extreme rules lawyering, to save preindustrial people from natural disasters of a sort they cannot possibly fathom, let alone effectively confront on their own. 

Although not directly mentioned, the lack of interest in addressing the collapse of Tasha Yar’s world, a failed Human colony, is also often lumped into the category of Prime Directive cowardice or an overcorrection to the perceived ill advised or straight up imperialist interventions of the Cold War.

I’m not going to exert a lot of effort arguing against this, but suffice to say I think complaints about the Prime Directive in TNG are overstated namely because every time it would have been depraved not to violate the Prime Directive, Picard violates it or allows the crew to contrive a highly legalistic solution that embraces the spirit of the Prime Directive but is probably coming very close to breaking the letter. 

I’m vaguely aware of an Enterprise episode that is widely considered to represent genocide through inaction, but I have not personally seen it.

Notable for Discovery, Burnham violates the Prime Directive pretty flagrantly in Season 5 and in a manner very reminiscent of something Kirk would do, and she gets away with it. Not even a hint of a reprimand.

The other manner in which cultural relativism is expressed is in the arena of astropolitics. 

Picard is notorious in some circles for his willingness to let his ship take a punch and keep trying to talk the other side down. 

The Cardassian peace treaty is widely regarded as not worth the isolinear chips it’s stored on as well as a brazen and immoral giveaway to fascists who were definitely always going to use the treaty to take a breather before their next round of massacres and land grabs.

The Federation treating the Maquis as terrorists instead of freedom fighters is also viewed as rather dystopian.

The Klingons continue to be slavers and brutal thugs and the Federation continues to politely tolerate it in this era.

Sandefur is intensely critical of having made peace with the Klingons at all in Undiscovered Country given no requirements that they change their ways, only wide eyed assumptions that with enough time and engagement they would mellow out. The Klingons are even described as being members of the Federation in a few early episodes before this was quietly retconned to mean allies.

For some bizarre reason that I cannot fathom, Sandefur takes Azetbur and Chang as objective observers and mouth pieces for the writers in Star Trek VI when they describe the Federation as racist and imperialist during the dinner party aboard the Enterprise. 

It's insightful and alarming that some people don’t seem to grasp the concept of an unreliable narrator or can’t tell the difference between being lectured by an omniscient narrator and characters spouting talking points lifted from the real world so that their perspectives feel familiar without granting those perspectives legitimacy. That this phenomenon exists shouldn’t surprise me but in a way it's revelatory because it really goes a long way to explaining how bizarre fandom discourse often is.

Credit where credit is due, Sandefur’s opinions on detente with the Klingons and Cardassians are not ones I’d characterize as unpopular. They’ve especially surged with the Russian invasion of Ukraine although optimism about civil engagement with the morally distasteful already was under siege throughout much of the 21st century. 

While I am personally unabashedly pro-Ukraine with some pragmatic caveats, in other arenas, such as discourse about the Federation’s toleration of unjust societies, I find that there is a very problematic tendency to try to use analogies about individuals or small groups, i.e. confronting a school yard bully or protecting your favorite bar from racist thugs, and scale them up to fit situations involving millions or billions of people. 

Throw in a dash of magical thinking about just how directly you can translate GDP disparities into useful objects in the real world, cultural fluency as it pertains to understanding what makes people move on from traditional (read: "backwards") norms or riot, and the precision with which spur of the moment decisions can be made in stressful situations, and you can easily wind up with a theory of change that paints the Federation as cowardly for not doing exactly the sorts of things that in the real world have at various times left much of Africa, Asia, and South America shattered and under the thumb of warlords based on the theory that the people were not fit for self rule.

Next: Is "Picardism" anti-progress? Also, I try not to get very upset about the idea of applying imminent domain laws to immortal aliens who are, like, just really into farming.

[mrschwartz]

Alex Turner for Rumore Magazine (September 2013)

Seventies Heads and Modern Loves or I Don't Know What I Want But I Surely Want You

by Elia Alovisi

Until he opens his mouth, Alex Turner looks like he stepped out of the Nevada desert. Leather loafers, a belt, slicked-back hair, sunglasses. But as soon as he starts talking, between “summat” instead of “something” and “me” instead of “my,” he transforms back into a boy from Sheffield who grew up on cocktails and DJ sets. The discrepancy between the way he looks and the way he speaks is strange: you would expect a cocky and arrogant rock star, but instead you have before you a relaxed and thoughtful boy who carefully measures his words, but does so with a smile and not a frown. The lyrics of AM, the fifth album of his band, mainly revolve around difficult and elusive women. There are many questions. “Do I want to know?” “Are you mine?” he says; “Why do you always call me when you’re high?” she says. There is no shortage of desires: “I want it all,” “I want to be yours.” Absent, however, are the answers. We tried to get a few out of him.

How was it to be back at Glastonbury as a headliner five years after the first time?

Fantastic. Absolutely wonderful, this time it was very natural. Everything was harder in 2007, we had done a lot less shows and had a lot less songs. Now we have learned to move better.

After the experience of Humbug, you collaborated again with Josh Homme.

Yes, Josh is on Knee Socks, towards the end of the piece. We gave him carte blanche and he decided to sing a sort of counter-melody that reminds me a lot of Bowie.

Are knee socks your favorite piece of underwear on a woman?

[Laughs] What do you think?

If she has the right legs.

Exactly, yes. The best is the garter. But then they would not be Parisian anymore, right? And then they are thicker than women's stockings. However they are not my favorite underwear, I go with the push-up.

In the lyrics of Arabella you talk a lot about the universe.

I wanted to use that linguistic palette to try to describe a woman. There are many songs that use those sorts of words… galaxy, interstellar, constellation, things like that, but usually they are used just for the sake of being used. Instead I wanted to make them an active part of a description, they are images that I find very interesting. In England, on the BBC, there is this program called Wonders of the Universe, with Professor Brian Cox. And it is one of my favorite programs [smiles, pleased].

Barbarella also pops up in the text.

Yes, although I haven't read practically any of her comics and I've only seen a small piece of the movie. I don't really like B movies. To know her, you just need to have seen a poster, that's all you need. I just used her to make a comparison with the costume she wears.

How does the suite you sing about in Fireside relate to room 505 in Favourite Worst Nightmare?

Yes, I’m talking about a suite in my heart… or in her heart? Well, in someone’s heart. Room 505, in my mind, is something very concrete. I wrote that song on a train between Philadelphia and New York, my girlfriend was in a hotel waiting for me and I just wrote about that [Turner’s voice becomes increasingly whispered as the sentence progresses]. In Fireside, however, it’s all figurative.

So how much of your real self is in your lyrics and how much is just imagination?

There's no rule, sometimes there's a lot of me in the lyrics when you least expect it. I put little secrets in them. What I try to avoid is that people who listen to one of my songs say, 'oh, he's talking about that girl'. You know when you read a novel and, somehow, in your mind you see its characters with the faces of some of your friends, or your favorite actors? That's where I want to get to with my music, I want it to be like being in front of a story, not the evidence of two people with a name and a surname who are kissing. It's up to the listener to give them both a face. When I write I pretty much always have someone or something in mind, but it doesn't really matter.

How did you come up with the idea of ​​using John Cooper Clarke's words for I Wanna Be Yours?

We wrote most of the songs on this record on a four-track that I got for my birthday. I spent a while recording ideas on it, sometimes we'd loop a bass and drum melody for five minutes and the fact that it was on tape gave it an incredible color. Then I'd sit there with headphones and a microphone humming melodies, or making up silly lyrics to start coming up with ideas. One day, while I was jamming, the words I wanna be yours came out and I remembered that they were the title of one of his poems. I thought it would be cool to use someone else's words – and especially his, I'm a big fan of his. It's one of my favorite songs on the record, the lyrics alone make it different from anything we've done before. And then I love the juxtaposition of the slow, sexy, flirtatious music and his words.

The party you talk about in No. 1 Party Anthem seems a lot more laid back than the ones you’ve talked about in the past, like the house in This House Is A Circus.

That’s true, but the parties we go to are still pretty messy. They’re just twice as long.

Am I supposed to be imagining some sort of indie celebrity party?

Indie celebrity party? [Laughs.] No, no, no. The slow tempo of that song gives it a bit of a Los Angeles feel. It’s a city that I’m told is very similar to what we’re portraying on the new record, and I’m starting to think that might be true. Not that it sounds like the Eagles, you know.

It's like your sound is becoming more and more American.

Yeah, maybe. There's something special about that part of the world. Everything that came out of California owes something to '70s rock, the spontaneity of those rhythms also comes back in West Coast hip-hop. But then came the fucking '80s and… a lot of fucking bands that don't fit into that theory. I think there will always be something English in our sound, it's something we can never detach ourselves from.

How much does Sheffield still mean to what you do?

Well, you know… [he taps two fingers on a tattoo on the inside of his arm: the Yorkshire rose and underneath it the word “SHEFFIELD”].

There are three songs on AM whose titles are questions.

You don't notice things like that until you sit there and write the titles of the songs one after the other. I hadn't noticed until then, there are also a lot of wanna.

The protagonist of R U Mine? is wrapped up in a certain western imagery, you portray her as “a lone cowboy riding in an open space.” And in All My Own Stunts you talked about “watching cowboy movies on gloomy afternoons.”

I love the western style. The leather ties, the belts… Hey, look at this one I’m wearing! [He stands up and shows me his leather belt, turning his back: it has “TURNER” engraved on it, on either side of the horseshoes.] A friend gave it to me for my birthday, this year was really nice, between this and the four-track. I also love western movies, especially the ones about Butch Cassidy. I also love Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks, obviously.

How do you usually celebrate your birthdays?

They’re nothing too devastating. I have a birthday in early January, everyone is still recovering from Christmas and New Year’s, so the average response I get is usually “forget it.”

Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? brings back the drunken text messages you mentioned in The View From the Afternoon.

We've all done that at least once, come on. Those lyrics might have come off the first record, but the music is fully invested in what we're doing now. I just wanted to write something simple.

While we're on the subject: when was the last time you got bounced at the entrance of a nightclub? It's not like From The Ritz To The Rubble anymore, is it?

Shit, that was like four weeks ago! [Laughs.] We were in Stockholm, we were trying to get into an area of ​​the nightclub and there was no way we could get in.

What are those Mad Sounds you're talking about?

That song is about those moments when you put on a song and it's like it's talking about exactly how you feel. It's a song about those songs, and I hope it can become one of them. I get that feeling from some songs by Lou Reed, John Cale, or Harry Nilsson. It's like sometimes they really understand how I feel, and you're like, "What the fuck..." and you almost tell them to go fuck themselves.

The point where the song explodes is when you start singing a series of ooh-la-la-la. What is the la-la-la moment that sticks with you the most from the music you listen to?

Definitely the do-dodo-dodo-do-do-do-do from Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed.

By the way, who came up with the idea of ​​calling a song The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala? What does that mean?

It came up one day when we were making up names for guitar pedals – sometimes they have crazy names. The Blond-o-Sonic Shimmer Trap  would be perfect for a fuzz, for example. The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, however, comes from a bar we hung out in a lot while we were writing the previous record. The room was full of glitter and there were a lot of weird chicks all winking, like cougars.

The lyrics to Snap Out of It revolve around hypnosis. Do you think there's any real power behind it or is it just persuasion?

I've never been hypnotised, but it all seems pretty real when you watch hypnotists on telly. There's this show in the UK where this guy, Derren Brown, gets people to do all sorts of things. Crazy stuff like, "rob someone!" Nothing I'd want to be involved with.

In I Want It All you say, “Leave me listening to the Stones 2000 light years from home.”

I’m actually a Beatles guy, no doubt. But I like them both, I saw the Stones at Glastonbury and it was great.

Don't you think it's better for a band to go at the top of their game than to keep going and going and risk having nothing left to say?

What the Stones have managed to do is really extraordinary. I mean, they're seventy years old and they're still on stage. It's very difficult to have an opinion on something like this because I don't think I've reached that level yet. I'm very excited about the new album, we've reached the point of being a good live band and, speaking as an artist, I think I've reached a certain excellence this time. I want to build on that, explore new things. We still have a lot of places to go.

I think the main difference between AM and your previous albums is the small amount of guitars.

This time we didn't want to sound like four guys playing in the same room, while that's exactly what we wanted to sound like in Suck It And See. We immersed ourselves in a more minimalist idea. The guitars are perfect, sometimes they don't even sound like guitars from the way they're played, or from the effects we put on them. They sound a bit "spacey," they would be good for the stereo of a flying saucer. Then we came out with some bass and drum parts perfect to be played at full volume through the speakers of a car. We also worked much more with the vocal lines, especially with the choirs.

There are actually a lot of songs where you put backing vocals and backing vocals, especially One For The Road.

Matt, Nick and I do them. Jamie is the only one who doesn't want to have anything to do with them. It all started with R U Mine? , the part where we all start going: [hums the backing vocals]. As soon as we tried that part we realized how good it sounded, we especially liked the fact that it was something we hadn't done before. So we just went for it.

[please-read-the-manga]

A little more of that weird 'Ghost Izuna Follows Sasuke Around' idea?

I feel like in this universe, it'd be hard for Sasuke not to eventually get caught talking to/arguing with Izuna as they work things out.

It's not like Kurama where Naruto eventually has this telepathic connection to him, I think Sasuke would always have to actually speak out loud to communicate with Izuna. And Izuna can also only be heard by him, so even if Sasuke's talking to someone else, he (and he alone) can still hear Izuna's running commentary likely resulting in some interesting/inappropriate reactions in front of whoever he's with.

Keep in mind this is also (likely) a cheeky Izuna who lived over 100 years ago (ie. doesn't quite understand the 'modern' world), has his own staunch biases (hates the Senju, hates the village idea, feels his brother was betrayed, etc), and kind of has nothing to lose (though he does want to aid Sasuke and by extension help him do his duty to the clan). I guarantee some of his 'commentary' and 'advice' is unhelpful/distracting haha.

So over time everyone probably thinks Sasuke is just this tragic, lonely boy (true) who has started talking to himself because of everything that happened. Definitely would not help his already fragile self-esteem lol, but Izuna gets to play 'big' brother for once and finds it kind of amusing at least.

[eruptedinlight]

hello hi the romance punched me so hard in the throat i almost snapped my laptop in half

[m0rbs]

Disco Spock is destroying my autism today for some ungodly reason. Someone kill me I desperately need to put him in a salad spinner