#literally every episode with Sarek? destroyed

[null-doesnothing]

"hey you doing alright?" no actually I'm thinking about Sarek again

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Popping back into disco fandom after a busy week and decided to give my incomprehensible meta from earlier this week a reblog; however, discovered that this webbed site hid it and realized that, despite my scrupulously including no links, it very likely was hidden because of my tongue-in-cheek use of a certain phrase, so decided to just repost instead sans webbed site phrase. Anyway, 

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right–fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain–even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It’s hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

Despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued–and less visibly disabled–person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery–Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?

[green-blooded]

how do u feel bout disco??

Okay, first of all. I have not finished it yet! I am just about to go to Talos IV, so anything after that I don’t have an opinion about.

But okay.

THE GOOD STUFF

um hello they wrote stamets for me specifically? like they didn’t have to put everything i like into a character but those weirdos went for it and i appreciate that.

I like the characters in general! They are fun. The actors are mostly p good.

i like what they did with amanda and sarek and pike. i like that spock has a learning disability like mine because i’m self-centered. i don’t know how i feel about spock other than that because he hasn’t said shit yet.

TILLY.

ummmmmmmmmmmmm i like some things about the way they used the mirror universe, but in the grand tradition of star trek series, it didn’t explore all the shit i wanted it to.

hey you know that episode where stamets and reno are working together? I honestly can’t think of very much genre fiction where an explicitly queer man and an explicitly queer woman interacted in a way totally divorced from their sexualities. it literally made me cry.

The ??? stuff

So far (as in, the part I’ve seen) season 2 has just been a lot of reactions to fan complaints about season 1 and I don’t like that. Do it or don’t do it, change it or don’t. But I hate that kid of fan service. Every show I’ve seen who gives in to fans too much ends up destroying itself. Take feedback, sure, but… this has been A Lot.

I kind of wish that star trek series would go forward instead of constantly going back. as much as i loooove amanda and sarek and pike, i just. feel like the character of michael got all caught up in their drama instead of being her own new character at times? I still love her so very much but… i continuously feel ehhh about it.

i’m real curious what they’re going to do with hugh (the doctor not the borg whoops). i was furious when he was killed, but now that he’s unkilled idk.

speaking of unkilled, they need to stop doing the comic book thing of killing characters and bringing them back. it’s already getting old and like. if you’re going to be all gritty and shit, it’s pretty weak to undo all the dark shit you did. makes it hit less hard, and hitting hard is the whole point of the gritty shit… maybe admit that gritty and grimdark doesn’t work that well with star trek idk.

i don’t really mind the weird ass vandermeer style science fiction, even if it’s a little odd in Star Trek. I think things need to change in different series. I kind of wish they’d play it up more or drop it, though.

The, like, actually bad stuff

the cinematography is fucking awful. why, of all the styles to cop from, did they choose jj abrams reboot shiny ass every angle is canted every shot is moving nothing is still ever bullshit style

… that not klingon guy. is his name taylor? i don’t remember. i find him really boring and he has no chemistry with michael and i just roll my eyes at him all the time.

i don’t like the design of the ship at all. once again, it’s like the jj enterprise. too dang big.

i hate the season long plot arcs. give me a good 3-6 episode arc and i’m good. more than that is too much. but also only 6 episodes if it’s as good as the 6 episode arc in DS9 where the Cardassians take the station, okay. Generally keep it to 3 at most.

PLEASE JUST GIVE ME A NICE, CALM EPISODE WHERE THE CHARACTERS JUST GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER NOW AND THEN. GIVE ME MORE LITTLE MOMENTS THAT MAKE ME LOVE EVERYBODY. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.

too much action. please let my children rest.

[wildishmazz]

Discovery thoughts infodump

Probably of little interest to anyone. But I've not been feeling well today, so all I've done is binge Discovery.

And I baked a cake. But that's by the by.

Nice little detail on Discovery when they get back from the Mirrorverse, drones painting the “U” back onto the hull where they’d changed it to “I”.

Interesting that Klingons are the paranoid white supremacists in this universe - lashing out and destroying anyone who isn’t them to “protect their culture”. I guess it couldn’t be the Federation, though they embody white privilege a lot of the time. They’re more like well meaning rich white gap year students digging wells in third world countries.

If the official story is now that Captain Georgiou has been rescued and returned to duty, does that change anything for Burnham’s criminal record?

“It[fear] speaks very fast, and very loud” - so fear is Ben Shapiro?

Okay, why did hearing the words “It’s the USS Enterprise.” on Discovery make me literally cry? It’s not like I wasn’t expecting it. I know who Captain Pike was. I knew NCC-17□□ could only be completed 01. I knew Spock’s father, sister, and probably mother were on board the Discovery, and it would be insane to have all that lead up and then not include him. And it wasn’t the sight of the ship itself, or the music - it was the words “It’s the USS Enterprise.”.

Gonna go with Sarek on this one, human emotions are weird.

Why does Pike feel like Zapp Brannigan?

And the doodad Stamets was using was like the thing they had on the other ship in the Delta Quadrant. The one they called the poor man's holodeck.

Someone just got called a redshirt. Uh oh. Will they follow the trope or subvert it?

The landing pods would make a good rollercoaster. They're even described as one.

Ooh. They killed the blue shirt instead.

And Pike is good.

Interesting, the indistinct figure initially had wings, then the tips of them became horns, before resolving into Pike. I wonder if that's a foreshadowing of potential outcomes?

"Not every cage is a prison" ooh. Ooh. OOH. That so tallies with The Ensign's log and returning Pike to the planet from The Cage. Though the message essentially came from Lorca, so I expect a sting in the tail. The second half, "and not every loss is eternal", could refer to just about anyone or anything.

Ah, I see. The second series is when it becomes more traditionally episodic.

I bet Tilly is supposed to read as fat. She's just about average sized, and not corseted to flatten her lumps. Still, it's a start.

The SJW in me loves seeing a white man shut down by the three black people in the room with him.

So Risa is already a holiday planet in Discovery time.

I didn't catch the nurse's name, but she's intriguing. She sounds different. Possibly special needs, but possibly also deliberately inhuman. Is she supposed to be telepathic, and so finds verbal communication awkward? Is she not actually there?

Poor Jacob. He so desperately wanted to go with them.

Oh, so Tilly was local to Starfleet Headquarters and Academy.

Ooh, May's a ghost. That suggests a route for Hugh to get back.

Heh, "on your left". Is May like that time a kid on the Enterprise had an imaginary friend who became insufficiently imaginary?

It would be nice if the theme tune were to gradually morph into a familiar one - start with the first two notes the same, then the first three, then all four. I don’t suppose they’ll do that, but it would be nifty. Or slowly introduce the thirds below so they harmonise and morph together.

And now the Klingons begin to diversify into the TOS and TNG species we recognise. They're starting to grow hair, and there's at least one who looks human. Nice solution.

Yeah, she's an alien trying to infiltrate by using the image of Tilly's old friend. She was the spore that landed on Tilly's shoulder when they left the Mirrorverse, wasn't she?

Tyler's gone all Lady Macbeth. Out, damn spot.

The baby's very white. Maybe it'll grow up to be The Albino.

Okay, I expected the hooded figure to be Spock. Prior to Netflix, I wouldn't have been sure that I had seen a different face as she took the hood off that morphed into Georgiou. She claims to be Section 31, but I am not convinced.

Okay, by the end of the episode, I am convinced. And becoming convinced that the Klingon baby will become the Albino, who was an old man approximately 100 years later in time for Dax et al to seek vengeance against him.

Ey, Number One!

Is Spock, perhaps, undergoing an issue relating to Vulcan… biology? The biology which is specific to Vulcans?

Pretty sure that mushroom just wants to go home.

I'm guessing Spock's doing much as Data did in Insurrection.

Badass engineer lady is badass.

Well, Saru's a slave to his biology, he might not be the only one.

They've clearly got a better budget for this series than previous ones, they can afford licensed music. Appropriate Bowie.

The confusing thing about Pike is that he looks older here than in The Cage, but he must be younger, because Spock is only a kid.

Tilly's going to come back from the network with Hugh.

Yay, we're getting close to Spock!

Now to find out what he's up to…

Oh. Section 31. Whatever that shapeshifter thing is that's walking around as Georgiou. Not a Founder, surely? I bet it looked like Spock when it got onto the shuttle.

She is rather fun, though.

Cocky shits eat apples to prove that they don't care.

Shades of the Upside Down. Including the echo and the orbs.

Yes, I like Pike. He's a good and interesting person.

Is the resemblance to Adrian Pimento deliberate?

VERY Upside Down.

The way the characters speak reminds me of the dialogue in Being Human.

The monster is Hugh. He will be reconstituted by the power of love.

A starship sinking into water is a weird, weird image.

I suspect Section 31 is about to make things a lot worse.

Huh, weird, they didn't. Not immediately, anyway.

Why isn't this the episode called Take My Hand?

Nice pseudosciencebabble.

Oh no. He can't cross over. They'll find a way, won't they? Won't they?

Yay for Tilly.

Not even Harry Kim had such a resurrection.

I’mna guess the Ba’ul are Kelpians who have matured and survived Vahar’ai to the point of having their ganglia fall out and be replaced with spines. Then they become cannibals. Saru would probably have been initiated as a Ba’ul if he’d been on his homeworld at the time. So they won’t actually be breaking the Prime Directive.

Also that Hugh had some other body mod that’s now gone, and that’s really upsetting him.

Ooh, they’re ever so precise about matching the sound to the cuts, aren’t they? To the point of switching the stereo for half a second.

The Ba’ul did actually say that they would do anything to protect their people.

Is “fascinating” a Vulcan thing, or a specifically Spock’s family thing?

Oh. I was wrong about the Ba’ul. Damn. There’s potential for the Kelpiens to become a tragic new villain, mind.

The sphere’s a bit of a deus ex machina, but a forgivable one.

I suspect the Ba’ul are going to end up victims.

Oh look, the Red Angel.

…its face looked lumpy in a similar way to the thing that turned into Georgiou.

ooh, parallels. Tyler sitting alone in the canteen.

Wait, is the Red Angel the Doctor? A time travelling meddler who isn’t actually omnipotent, but needs local help to get shit done?

Kinda disappointed that that’s just what transporters look like now. Means the way Dahj dematerialised off the stairs in the Picard trailer isn’t distinctly different, and closer to Q than anything else.

[jbk405]

Episode three of season two of Star Trek Discovery just plunged right down the hole again.  It was just...bad.

As a trekkie I'm almost offended at the way they tried to have Amanda Rogers say she was a bad mother who neglected her son and deliberately withheld affection, since pretty much the one thing that all continuity has agreed upon is that Spock loved his mother and she loved him.  Even Sarek's fault as a parent was in execution, not intent; he never deliberately tried to distance himself from his son.  Then to have Amanda literally turn her back on Michael, withdrawing and walking out the door after Michael says she did something to make Spock dislike her, is absolutely atrocious.  Especially since she had essentially just made the same confession.  Amanda doesn't even know what Michael actually did, so for all she knows it is something minor from childhood which Michael has blown up in her memory because she was a traumatized kid lashing out at those around her.  To literally walk away from her daughter because she made some extremely vague statement about being mean to her son when they were kids...that's horrible.

Tilly's handling of the hallucination was ridiculous, and I was screaming at the TV in nearly every scene to go to sickbay.  This wasn't a vague noise in her ear or attention lapse, she's having vivid hallucinations that began after a traumatic injury which could be the result of brain damage or god-knows-what, and the fact that she's just trying to ignore it is idiotic.  That's the kind of the thing which should legitimately get her thrown out of command training: Not that she's having hallucinations, but that she does not seek any treatment even when they interfere with her duty.  When she finally confesses that she's actually been avoiding sickbay -- meaning she knows they would probably be able to deal with her problem -- I flat-out want to see her thrown out of Starfleet.  Even Lieutenant Barclay, hypochondriac and paranoiac extraordinaire, could finally bring himself to go to Dr. Crusher when he saw that stuff was actually wrong with him and it wasn't just "Oh I'm being weird again".  After he WebMDd with the ship’s computer, anyway.

The detours on Qo'nos were no better.  Apart from the fact that I actually do like Ash's beard -- the lack of facial hair on humans throughout all of Trek is symptomatic of the lack of individuality and the oppressive conformity which we've seen throughout the Federation -- the conflict was just weird.  Involving the Terran Emperor to resolve it just leads to me throwing up my hands in anger, because she was the one in favor of destroying the planet in the first place and I see no reason why she would want to save Klingon unity now (when she could have gone off-mission and stolen the detonator from L'Rell and finally pushed the button herself).  I see no reason why she would join Section 31 at all, or why they would work with her.  Section 31 isn't just evil for evil's sake.  Though they certainly are evil (And I actually really hate that they keep being introduced into continuity.  I legitimately hate the concept and wish they had never been introduced in DS9) they claim that what they do is necessary for the sake of the Federation and they claim to hold the Federation's ideals at heart.  The Emperor despises the very concept of the Federation, and she makes no secret about that.  While 31 would certainly use her if they thought they could get away with it, they wouldn't actually make her a member or let her operate freely.

On a more expansive note, it's becoming a real problem for the series as a whole that so much is revolving around Michael Burnham and her family.  SF Debris made a point in his reviews of season one that more than any previous Star Trek series, Discovery revolves around Michael Burnham as the "main character".  It is her story in a way that no other show has done with the captain.  I thought it was handled quite well in the first season -- I enjoyed it much more than SF Debris apparently did, and he'd be the first to say that that's okay because his reviews are explicitly just his personal opinions -- but now it's overbearing the series.  Her brother is having visions, and she is having visions, and those visions are tied to her childhood and Spock's childhood, and her ship is investigating with her brother's captain in command.  Benjamin Sisko's adventures didn't revolve as totally around him as this is, and he was literally the Bajoran messiah.

All told, this episode was just an unpleasant experience to sit through. 

[porgthespacepenguin]

first thoughts about episode 11

So a few hours behind most people, I have finally watched episode 11 and … what a ride!

First let’s start off by comparing what I had predicted earlier on with what actually happened:

The eye injury Michael inflicted on Voq in episode 2 ended up super important (Correct)

Voq revealed (Correct)

Voq fighting against mirror!Voq (Correct)

Lorca being revealed in the same episode (Wrong)

Ash/Michael going down in flames (Correct)

Ash vs. Voq being the only prime vs. mirror showdown (Wrong)

4/6 isn’t too bad a score, and the episode honestly exceeded my wildest hopes (which I keep low on purpose). I am happy to get stuff wrong as long as it’s better than I anticipated! And it was.

And I admit I’m pretty proud of figuring out the eye injury was important, as it was what almost immediately clued me in to Ash being Voq and I have not seen it discussed anywhere else (if someone else did figure it out as well, feel free to comment and I’ll amend my post).

Now onto the analysis. Beware, this is not a meta, just some ideas after watching the episode a few times.

Ash/Michael – welcome to tragedy, population: us

Forewarned is forearmed: the show definitely did warn us, though not in so many words, that this could only end in tears. Regardless, witnessing Ash and Michael’s relationship crash and burn was beyond painful.

I wrote in my earlier meta that I didn’t believe that Ash/Michael could come back from all this. I stand by my opinion more than ever after episode 12.

First and foremost, there is the fact that as soon as Voq got his memory back (and therefore his full agency) he made his choice, in full conscience.

And that choice was to murder Michael.

Let that sink in for a while.

He chose to murder her in cold blood.

Worse, if mirror!Saru hadn’t intervened, he would have gone through with it and succeeded. It was only because of Michael showing kindness to Saru earlier on that she didn’t die.

Later on in the episode, Voq shows no remorse. No regrets. Not even a hint of internal pain.

To me, more than anything, this highlights that their relationship is dead in a romantic sense.

You can come back from a lot of things – lies, double-crossing, even betrayal – but attempted murder without a hint of remorse or regret is more than a line crossed.

Especially as they are an established relationship, not two adversaries on a battlefield (I would not hold their first fight in episode 2 to the same standard, for example – that was a clearly different situation).

If the show did walk that back, and put them back together, I don’t think I could continue watching. I liked Ash/Michael but after watching episode 11, I’m out.

Some people have speculated that Michael could potentially find mirror!Tyler and pick up the relationship with him instead. I see many issues with this:

Assuming there is even a Tyler…

And his mirror!version is not a racist jerk…

Michael did not have feelings for Tyler, she had feelings for Tyler/Voq…

And just picking up a spare right after losing the original guy feels a bit… cheap?

I know, I can hear some of you saying: wait, aren’t you the one who wrote that long boring meta about how Lorca had a past relationship with mirror!Michael?

Yes, I am. And I stand by it, by the way. I truly think it would be really lovely storytelling to have Lorca finding his lost love in another universe after tragedy struck (and if Michael hadn’t been sentenced to life in prison, to a literal “future full of misery”, I’m not sure he would have interfered at all – just a gut feeling).

When it comes to Michael and Ash, trying to replace the original guy (who attempted to murder you) with a lookalike equipped with a better personality is problematic to say the least.

It would cheapen their actual relationship (past or not, it did exist!) and totally erase Voq from the equation, leaving us to wonder what purpose this whole arc served. Unsatisfying on so many levels, so that’s a  pretty firm no from me.

In the future, what will happen with Voq?

Until we go back to the prime!universe, probably not a whole lot. Michael might have to face him again to come to terms with some things, though.

Once we are back, from a story perspective Voq will have to resume his own narrative arc, which means potentially breaking out with L’rell and going back to the Klingons.

Perhaps a resolution to the war can then be found before the end of season 1 but it would necessitate a time jump: no way can we go believably from murderous fanatic Voq to “humans are not so bad” Voq in 2 episodes.

We might get there eventually, if his experiences as Ash can bring him the same wisdom mirror!Voq displayed. But again, this type of character development takes time.

Before we move on… in hindsight all of Tyler’s declaration of love and protection sound pretty hollow right about now. And yes, I’m bitter about it on Michael’s behalf.

Michael deserves better, dammit.

Michael/Lorca

The agony booth scene

So much to unpack here, it almost deserved its own post.

Before anything else… poor Gabriel. I mean look at him. He needs a hug and a stiff drink, is what he needs.

So, the agony booth scene. They are both standing. Lorca looks like hell, he is shaking and barely holding together. Importantly, this has stripped away a lot of his defenses. He is not in control the way he usually is, not anymore.

Michael is conflicted about what to do with the rebel base. Lorca’s response is immediate, do what you have to do and bomb them if you have to.

Now I have seen some people react to this as confirmation of Lorca being evil or being out to grab the throne for himself.

But let’s keep a few things in mind:

Lorca is familiar with the Empress, and he correctly foresees the fact that she will be mightily displeased at her orders not being followed. Michael is taking a huge tactical risk by being merciful, and it ends up having huge consequences.

Even if he is not affiliated with the rebels, it doesn’t follow that he would not be leading a rebel Terran faction of his own. As far as we have seen, the rebel group led by Voq doesn’t seem to have any Terran members. It would be fairly logical that there would be dissent within the Terran ranks beyond the non-human resistance.

The conversation that follows is pretty amazing. This is one of the first time we see Michael inspire Lorca, pulling him toward her idealism and Starfleet morals and away from the mirror universe’s darker, more ruthless standards.

After all, wasn’t that explicitely one of the reasons he chose her?

You chose to do the right thing, even at great personal cost.

That moment, all the way back in episode 3, made me certain that Lorca isn’t evil.

Dark? Maybe. Morally grey? Sure.

Evil? No.

I mean let’s be logical about this. If I were a villain intent on committing a villainous plot, I wouldn’t go ahead and specifically pick a person with a strong moral compass to help me with it. They would of course try to thwart me at every turn. It would make zero sense.

Ah, penguin, I can hear some people say, but what if Lorca needs her, specifically, to access the Empress? Wouldn’t he recruit her and then manipulate her into doing his bidding then?

Sure. So let’s take a detour to “How to manipulate someone 101”:

Destroy your victim’s self esteem

Use gifts and favors to create a feeling of obligation

Isolate them from their support system: family, friends, romantic attachments

Denigrate their achievements

Undermine their self confidence

Punish the victim for perceived transgressions

Right. And in contrast, so far Lorca has:

Helped her rebuild her confidence on her own (contrast the start and beginning of episode 3, it’s such an amazing change)

Given her a job and a place aboard a starship again, while avoiding her gratitude as much as possible

Helped her maintain or rebuild her support system: mounted a rescue for Sarek (family), gave her Tilly as a roommate (who was the only one good hearted enough to look past Michael’s transgressions and befriend her), and kept his opinion to himself concerning her relationship with Tyler (though he was undoubtedly jealous)

Praised her for her strategic mind and her strong sense of morale

Encouraged her to take pride in herself (“You did well, Burnham. You should be proud.”)

Trusted her with the most important missions

Ignored at least one transgression that could have landed her in the brig (that fight they had on the bridge in episode 9)

I’m sure I’m forgetting things but you get the idea.

Honestly, if he needed her only as a tool, it would have been much smarter to keep her under his thumb with her confidence broken. Look how pliable she was at the start of episode 3.

(Again, I do think that the fact that Georgiou is the Empress is significant, and that having Michael on his side against her is a tactical advantage – but that’s not the whole of it, by a long shot.)

Anyway, moving on.

Michael sweetens the deal by adding the part about finding out how the Fire Wolf leads his coalition, but essentially it all boils down to:

She appeals to his moral sense

She asks him not to force her to commit such a terrible act

And it works. Partly because after so much torture, Lorca’s defenses are way down. But I think it’s mostly because of Michael’s ultimate secret weapon: she says please.

Seriously.

She says please, and… that’s that.

Just like with the Sarek rescue mission, Lorca just gives in and makes an illogical tactical decision (which, I might add, results in the Empress coming straight for them at the end of the episode).

Visually, I don’t have much to say beyond the extensive use of choker shots. Those are very often used to create emotional intimacy and tension, as I’ve mentioned many times before. This is not a shot you’d use for people who are not developing a strong relationship of some sort (be it friendship or romance).

And finally… Lorca’s “Hurry back. Please.” just kills me.

That’s not an order. That’s a plea.

The meeting room scene

Their second scene together is quite different. Lorca is looking a little better, while Michael seems shattered by her recent betrayal.

By the way. I love how Michael (who is a tough cookie) is psychically exhausted after 3 days in the mirror!universe and how much reflection (pardon the pun) she is doing on it.

Hopefully it will help mitigate her anger at Lorca when she finds out he is from the mirror!universe too (and has spent his entire life there without turning into a human-shaped demon spawn like the rest of the Terrans). At this point, overthrowing the Empress is starting to look like a moral imperative.

Lorca informs her they have to stay longer, for reasons that are both tactically sound and highly convenient, because I’m pretty sure he plans to face the Empress at some point (though probably not right there and then).

There also a lovely little morsel I wasn’t expecting: Lorca sounds jealous. He can’t bring himself to say “liked” or “loved” (that little pause is very telling) and when he says “Tyler”, you can tell he truly wanted to say “what’s his face”.

As an aside, I think he only noticed Michael’s partiality for Tyler in the previous episode, when Ash had a panic attack in the worker bee. I don’t think I mentioned it in my main meta, but I adore the way Lorca manages to sound at once gruffly protective (“You can relax too. He’s safe.”) and jealous despite himself.

Moving on.

Michael just can’t take it anymore, she’s scared, and she just admits it to him, leading to this amazing exchange:

“I don’t think I can survive this place alone.”

“You are not alone, Michael. We will survive this place… together.”

And then Lorca takes her hand. This is the first touch we have seen him initiate with her. It’s also the second time he calls her Michael, and that’s not a coincidence.

Not Michael Burnham, not Burnham, not Specialist Burnham.

Just plain Michael.

Right there and then, Lorca is not being her captain. He’s just being a man, comforting a woman.

Even more importantly, @trashywestallen made a brilliant point in one of our discussions, which I hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out.

This scene is meant to be the mirror of the scene in episode 10 when Ash reaches for Michael’s hand during their discussion in the mess hall.

Both Ash and Lorca are on seated the left, while Michael is sitting on the right. (Very quick aside, the man on the left/woman on the right is imagery commonly found in classical paintings, with the Arnolfini portrait commonly cited as an example.) Both contacts are initiated by the man.

That’s where the similarities end, because everything else is inverted.

In the scene with Ash and Michael, the camera zooms in on their joined hands but very noticeably, the shot is obstructed by a teacup.

Contrasting this with Michael and Lorca: their hands are in plain view. There is even a shot with the light streaming in from behind through the window and onto their joined hands.

Another major difference: Tyler grabs Michael’s hand possessively to reassure himself. Lorca lays a calming hand over Michael’s to reassure her.

Ash takes Michael’s right hand with his right; Lorca covers Michael’s right hand with his left. Symbolically, this is hugely significant. The left hand is the hand (or arm) a gentleman or a knight would use to escort his lady: keeping the right hand, his sword hand, free to defend her.

Lastly: Ash asks her to let him handle things on his own; Lorca says they will figure it out together.

Point taken, I guess?

Everything else

Stamets! I am pretty glad to have been wrong about there being only one twin encounter. Go save your love, Paul. (Though mirror!Stamets freaks me out a little).

Empress Georgiou is utterly terrifying. I love it.

Michael lying to spare Saru (while Saru lies to spare her) is just lovely. Also interesting to note she is willing to lie for a good cause (not unlike other people I could name…)

Michael’s kindness to mirror!Saru coming back to save her is almost karmic.

Mirror!Voq was awesome. Wise, strong, everything a leader could be. Unfortunately, that means prime!Voq is the evil twin. Bummer.

Mirror!Sarek, who’s met Michael all of 5 minutes, is more validating and full of praise than our own Sarek. Seriously, dude, you’re going to have to step up the dad game, presto.

[tomfooleryprime]

Was Spock the first human/Vulcan hybrid?

First contact between humans and Vulcans occurred in 2063. Spock was born in 2230. If you listen to some Star Trek fans, that means 167 years passed before both our species decided to bear some sex fruit. Let’s be real though, 167 years is a long time for two civilizations to interact with each other without at least someone from one group deciding to bone someone from the other group, particularly when you consider the populations of both civilizations numbers in the billions.

We might say, “Maybe interspecies sex was just too big of a taboo! Maybe it took that long for barriers to finally start coming down.” Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it’s like Hagrid once said of Dobby the house elf: “Yeh get weirdos in every breed.” Even if 9,999,999,999 humans thought the idea of having sex with an alien was weird or unnatural, there would always be at least one exceptionally progressive person who could see beyond everyone else’s prejudices and pre-conceived notions, and I’m certain the same is true for Vulcans. I would almost be willing to bet that at least one of the first Vulcans who rolled off the T’Plana-Hath on that April morning in 2063 in Bozeman, Montana saw one of the locals and thought, “That human is aesthetically pleasing.” And all it takes is a spark, right? Besides, who wouldn’t want to hear a Vulcan pickup line?

And all the panties fell off as if by magic.

Moreover, in 1957, 106 years before official First Contact between humans and Vulcans, a small Vulcan survey ship crash-landed near Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania. There were only three survivors, and of those three, one of them just couldn’t stop himself from falling for the single mom who ran the local bar. Granted, Maggie didn’t know Mestral was Vulcan, but he definitely knew she was human, and a trivial thing like species didn’t seem to matter to him.

Smitten personified.

But wait, just because a few amorous, adventurous, or convention-hating humans and Vulcans might be willing to stand up and proudly (or maybe more discreetly) proclaim, “Love is love, fuck the haters” and get naked with each other, that doesn’t mean they were making babies because after all, humans and Vulcans are genetically incompatible and it would take a feat of medical engineering to swap gametes, right?

Argue if you want, but human/Vulcan sexy time dates back to at least 2153.

People who believe Spock must have been the first hybrid usually stake this claim on one or more of four arguments:

1.     Humans and Vulcans didn’t shack up routinely enough 2.     The science of making a hybrid baby didn’t exist until Spock came along 3.     Gene Roddenberry said so 4.     Spock clearly felt isolated as a child, but he wouldn’t have if there were more hybrids like him

I’ve already poked enough holes in the first claim. Maybe there weren’t a ton of interspecies couples, but I feel confident in saying there were at least some and some is all we need. And once people decide they like each other enough to form relationships, it’s usually not long before at least some of them start thinking, “You know what would make this better? A smaller version of us!”

As for the science behind making a hybrid baby, it existed in the mid 22nd century. Spock wasn’t the first. That’s a fact. Elizabeth, the hybrid child of Charles “Trip” Tucker and T’Pol, existed in 2154.

Pointy ears and pinchable cheeks.  

Elizabeth sadly died as a result of the improper cloning techniques used to conceive her, so there are many who would take the statement of “Spock was the first human/Vulcan hybrid” and simply add the caveat of “to survive.” Perhaps. But in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Terra Prime,” Trip says:

I spoke with Phlox. It turns out there was a flaw in the technique that Paxton’s doctors used in the cloning process. Human DNA and Vulcan DNA, Phlox says there’s no medical reason why they can’t combine. So if a Vulcan and a human ever decided to have a child, it’s probably be ok. And that’s sort of comforting.

So a Denobulan doctor knew a way to make hybrids a full 75 years before Spock was conceived. Maybe the technology was untested and required some refining, but by even a modern a technological timeline, 75 years is an eternity.  

There’s an interview between Gene Roddenberry and Mark Lenard which claims Spock was the first, and so a lot of people might be happy to believe whatever Roddenberry said was the gospel. In the interview, Roddenberry is interviewing Mark Lenard as Ambassador Sarek, asking him questions about humanity and his life when the subject of Spock comes up.

Mark Lenard: Spock’s mother Amanda is an extraordinary woman. Gene Roddenberry: And Spock was the result? The first human/Vulcan mixture? Mark Lenard: No, not the first, but the first to survive. As you must know, an Earth/Vulcan conception will abort during the end of the first month; the fetus is unable to continue life once it begins to develop its primary organs. The fetus Spock was removed from Amanda’s body at this time: the first such experiment ever attempted. His tiny form resided in a test tube for the following two Earth months while our physicians performed delicate chemical engineering, introducing over a 100 subtle changes we hoped would sustain life. At the end of this time, the fetus was returned to Amanda’s womb. At the ninth Earth month, the tiny form was again removed from Amanda, prematurely by Vulcan standards, and spent the following four months of Vulcan term pregnancy in a specially designed incubator. The infant Spock proved surprisingly resilient. There seemed to be something about the Earth/Vulcan mixture which created in that tiny body the fierce determination to survive.

So for some fans, maybe that counts as proof. But Gene Roddenberry had a lot of conceptual ideas about his beloved Star Trek that conflict with actual canon and modern science. For a prime example, just look at the treatment of star dates. So maybe it’s me, but I don’t think something is canon just because Roddenberry said it in an interview once. Furthermore, if we take that interview as canon, how do we explain this scene from The Final Frontier where Spock is delivered from Amanda (not a “specially designed incubator”) and presented to Sarek?

Then Sarek went and uttered one of the most dick lines in Trek history.

Lastly, there’s the isolation that Spock feels. How can we explain how lonely he is if it’s not because he’s the only hybrid? Quite easily, actually. Every single person in existence has felt misunderstood and alone at times. As children, our worlds are very small and our social circles consist of our immediate families, school mates, and our parents’ associates. That’s pretty much it. When we aren’t exposed to people like us, it’s very easy to imagine Rocket Raccoon might have been onto something when he said, “Ain’t no thing like me, except me!”

But that’s very rarely literally true, as every kid who’s ever been the only minority at their school or any teen who’s ever been the only gay person in their tiny conservative town will tell you. As we get older and achieve the freedom to strike out and meet people on our own terms, we often learn we weren’t quite as unique as we thought and there are whole groups of people out there who are black or gay or disabled or whatever it was that left us feeling so alone in our formative years. I think that’s why Spock’s character resonated so much with viewers – he was a symbol for all the misfits out there who knew just how much it sucks trying to fit into the fabric of a society that seems so different than they are.

 Proof that regardless of species, kids can be fucking awful. 

Vulcan was a big planet. By the time Nero destroyed it in Star Trek: 2009, it had more than 6 billion inhabitants. Even if there were only 100 human/Vulcan hybrids by that point in time, the odds of an average Vulcan encountering one would still be incredibly small. It’s entirely possible Spock may have felt like he was the only hybrid because he might have been the only one in his community, but the universe is a big place with plenty of room for other human/Vulcan hybrids he and those vicious bullies never met. 

Spock was clearly pretty special. Even people who hate Star Trek and know almost nothing about it know who Spock was and recognize the Vulcan salute Leonard Nimoy made famous in his portrayal of the character. But just because Spock’s human ancestry made him unusual doesn’t necessarily mean his conception was some completely novel, groundbreaking, pioneering leap for interspecies relationships either. 

I can’t say I know many Vulcans, but I think I have a pretty firm grasp on humanity. Despite homosexual, interracial, and interfaith relationships being taboo and even illegal in many countries until relatively recently (and sadly still are in some places) there have always been people who decided they didn’t care and took a chance on love. So I don’t buy the idea that humans and Vulcans could live and work together even in a limited capacity for more than a century and a half before making the jump into starting families.

[oldcoyote]

if you feel like it, i was interested to hear your thoughts about the new star trek discovery. based on your last post re new star trek episodes, it sounds like you weren't a fan. sorry if you've explained this before...

(cont’d) guess it’s not really ‘new’ anymore but yeah

i was so. damn. excited. for Discovery. the wait was this huge lead up from how long ago we got the announcement - i mean, i was dizzy with joy at the fact that we were getting a new Star Trek at all, let alone one with a woman as the main character. and then, it was all these amazing actors that i adore and knew from other shows & movies. and then it was going to be set pre-OS, and THEN the Number One references (MAJEL!!), and then it was going to be KLINGON FOCUSED and oh god my excitement was at peak. 

[ i should have prefaced this with: i didn’t just watch Star Trek, i was literally raised on it. OS trek fanfiction zines were my bedtime stories. VHS tapes of every series (even the animated, and sometimes as they aired from TNG onwards, taped off TV) were piled high on our shelves in the living room. my mother helped run conventions with SASTrek, she was one of the original Trekkies who helped save the show in the 1960s. watching Star Trek was, for the larger part of my childhood and adolescence - home. the best parts of home]

Disco got off to an awkward start. for me, the klingons were a hard barrier to get past. i was just frustrated at the unnecessary changes, initially. i gave it a try, i loved Michael, i loved Phillipa (STILL MAD), and i remember god so vividly what a catshit trash fire Encounter at Farpoint was so i knew i had to give it time, like i did for all the others. 

i have my own struggles with the portrayal of Sarek because Mark Lenard was Sarek, down to his bones, and nobody else has ever come close to possessing half his unspoken power or grace in that role. it always feels deeply off to me, the way he’s written in modern Trek - like nobody bothered to watch the original. i disliked so many choices, i hated the decision to divert so violently from Gene’s vision and the whole core meaning of Trek into this grimdark double-guessing-everything, played-for-shock crap. but beyond that, when i began to realise they were pulling an Enterprise and shovelling in racist political subtext, i was pretty much done. the torture & rape crap pushed me over the edge.

i loved so much of the cast, i adored so many of the characters. i was so excited to finally get more up front POC and gay representation in a universe where, let’s be fucking real, they should have been there all along and bright as day. but the show was destroyed bc white boys need their grimdark wank fuel, and these days, IDIIC and the true message of Star Trek just isn’t “interesting” anymore. fuck these days, man.

[njawaidofficial]

'Star Trek: Discovery' Premiere Explained | Michelle Yeoh

http://styleveryday.com/2017/09/25/star-trek-discovery-premiere-explained-michelle-yeoh/

'Star Trek: Discovery' Premiere Explained | Michelle Yeoh

September 24, 2017 7:30pm PT by Chris E. Hayner

[This story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery.]

  After the two-episode premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, it’s clear that the status of space is that of utter chaos. The first two hours of the CBS All Access drama introduced a new starship and its Starfleet officers, including the woman at the core of the drama, First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green).

  A human raised by Spock’s father, Vulcan Ambassador Sarek (James Frain), Burnham is unlike any previous Star Trek character. Her point of view shifts between the logical mentality of her surrogate home planet and human emotions, which ultimately in the first two episodes leads her down a dark path.

After Klingon leader T’Kuvma (Chris Obi) calls to unite all 24 houses in a war against the Federation, Burnham — in a bid to do the right thing for her ship — carries out a mutiny against her mentor, Capt. Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). She attacks a Klingon vessel and her plan fails, prompting a fully fledged Klingon attack that cripples several Starfleet ships. Georgiou winds up dead and Burnham, filled with rage after seeing her human mentor die before her eyes, retaliates and kills T’Kuvma.

  It ignites the show’s central conflict between the human Federation and the Klingons, setting the stage for the 13 remaining episodes to come in Discovery. The events leave Burnham’s life in shambles: her mentor is dead, ship destroyed and she is striped of her rank and sentenced to life in prison for mutiny. This is where the true story of Star Trek: Discovery begins. 

  To break down the events of the first two hours and preview what’s to come from the rest of Discovery, THR spoke with showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts about where Burnham goes from here as well as how the loss of her mentor and her guilt over igniting the war will guide her going forward.

The premiere introduces this world and a number of characters but by the end of episode two, much of it is blown up to propel the story to what Discovery will be about. Building from those ashes, where does the series go?

  Gretchen J. Berg: The first two episodes is where we get to see her backstory. We get to see what launches her into the rest of the series and a lot of times, certainly on more traditional television series, you’d see that through flashback or hear about that through conversation. But we showed it.

  Aaron Harberts: It enables the audience to see in two episodes who she was, who she is in that moment and who she thinks she’s going to be. She’s convinced she’s going to be a captain, her captain tells her as much. To be able to show the audience who Michael Burnham is and how she’s functioning in walking down a path she’s convinced she knows where it leads, what it allows us to do in episode three is show you everything she’s lost.

  When we talk about Discovery, it’s not only discovery in terms of the cosmos and what Star Trek means, voyages of discovery externally. But it’s also so much a story about Michael Burnham discovering who she is as a human being. To watch her fall allows us to then have the audience invest in how she’s going to rebuild herself. And does she really want to rebuild herself in the same image as the person who came before?

  It seemed really vital to the character and to the journey we’re setting forth to really allow the audience to get a great two-hour glimpse of that. I think the other very important thing was to show the audience that war is a horrible, terrible thing. As Georgiou says, it’s filled with blood and screams and funerals. When you end this, you’re not cheering. You’re not cheering at the end of all of these battles. You’re left with this pit in your stomach, left with this loss. You are left wondering how does this organization pick itself up and dust itself off and how does this lead character do the same?

    As the show moves forward, she’s not only lost her ship — her home — but her human mentor as well. Why kill off Georgiou?

  Harberts: That was always a piece of storytelling that [former showrunner] Bryan Fuller and [executive producer] Alex Kurtzman had as the architecture for the first two episodes. For us, it’s a very old way of telling the story. Getting people invested in these two characters, only to yank one away. It was sort of subliminally designed to say to the audience, “You think you know what kind of Star Trek you’re getting. You think you see who your Kirk and Spock are. But they’re not. This is not your everyday Star Trek.”

  Not only was it important for Burnham’s emotional journey and the loss she’s going to carry the entire series but it was a really terrific way to announce that this show was going to defy certain expectations.

  How does the human loss and responsibility for starting the war with the Klingons impact Burnham? 

  Berg: She’s carrying it with her every single step of the way through the series. And going back to the idea of Georgiou alone, and casting somebody like Michelle Yeoh, we needed to make sure we had a character and an actress that, even if you don’t see her physically on the screen, you’re going to feel her absence because she leaves that kind of impact on Burnham’s life and on the audience’s life.

  It’s a constant reminder for Burnham. It puts her in a very vulnerable position. There’s this character who’s so sure of herself. Every choice in her life was made with a goal in mind and it’s all been ripped away from her. Now she’s starting from nothing. She thought she knew who she was and where she was going and the people around her were going to be constants. That’s all different now, it’s all gone. It’s literally discovery, somebody figuring out who they are and how they fit in with everybody else on the ship or around them. It’s a big part of the storytelling for us the first season.

Harberts: The other thing that happens with Michael Burnham when you pick up in chapter three, this is a human raised on Vulcan. Logic was a cornerstone of her education and then her seven years under Georgiou provided her with a certain amount of teaching about what it means to be a human leader and to use emotion when you lead. What happens in episodes one and two is Burnham makes a decision using logic based on advice from Sarek and it backfires. Then she makes an emotional choice, a very rash choose — one that’s made in microseconds and fueled by the heart due to the grief over her dying captain — to kill T’Kuvma, the very thing she said would make a Klingon a martyr and further the war.

  She’s made decisions based on logic, she’s acted on emotion. Neither has worked, so where does she stand? Her entire worldview has crumbled and she’s got nothing to hold onto. That was interesting for all of the writers because everybody on Trek, in all the other iterations, one thing they do share is they’re super competent. They know what they’re there to do. They know how to solve problems. They’re brave and intelligent and capable. This is a character who was all of those things and now feels like everything she believed in or knew of or tried has been called into question. So we find a very shattered individual at the top of [episode] three.

  There’s also the story of season one where we talk about Starfleet itself wondering who they are as an organization. War makes even the most idealistic organizations flirt with darkness. Burnham is also asking herself who am I and those stories are running parallel through the season.

  It’s said in the premiere that nobody has seen a Klingon in 100 years. Now, the Federation is at war with them and Michael killed T’Kuvma, making him a martyr. How much of the war will the show cover this season?

  Berg: The thing that’s interesting about that is how do you reach peace with an enemy or an other that you don’t know at all? What do they consider the compromise? Starfleet is so used to being able to extend the hand of “we come in peace.” What happens if the group you’re facing off against isn’t interested in the same outcome as you are? That’s something we thought was really interesting to explore. At the end of the day, Starfleet has to be Starfleet. We do have to hold onto optimism and hope. The war will last through the whole season. How do we stick to our ideals when the folks we are fighting with are not interested in our ideals and don’t share them?

  Harberts: And we’re going to be tracking the war from the Klingon side as well. We’re going to find out that T’Kuvma’s plan of Klingon unity may not necessarily come to fruition. We’re watching this war take its toll on both sides. Not only from the standpoint of who’s winning and who’s losing, but from the standpoint of how far is T’Kuvma’s message going? At what point do the Klingons turn on each other? We find that this war ends up having an effect in that it splinters many people that thought they were actually allied from the start.

    Georgiou’s relationship with Michael was parental in nature. How does that compare to Capt. Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and how he will relate to Michael on the USS Discovery?

  Berg: They don’t share the history she had [with Georgiou]. You see in the flashback in episode two that we’re to assume it was very hard-earned for Georgiou and Burnham to get to that level of closeness that we see up top when they’re on their mission to get the well going again. It is a completely different relationship with Lorca and she’s getting to know a new individual with a very different point of view on how to face war and what is necessary to win.

  Harberts: If Georgiou represents the absolute ideal version of a Starfleet captain, which is to say she has the moral authority given to her by Starfleet, Lorca represents the situational ethics that come into play during times of desperation and war. During times where sometimes the rules don’t apply when it comes to matters of life and death. He exists in a very gray area and he’s almost a captain that could only exist in this context. And, in fact, context if a very important thing for Lorca. He believes that context is what should decide actions.

  You use flashbacks to a young Michael with Sarek and Georgiou. Will you continue to use flashbacks to explore both of those relationships? Have we seen the last of Yeoh? 

  Harberts: We’ll definitely be exploring the parental relationship between Burnham and Sarek further on in the series in flashbacks. Georgiou will always be present in Burnham’s life, in her consciousness. We won’t be doing as many flashbacks with Georgiou but we do definitely explain and explore what happened to young Burnham at the Vulcan learning center in that horrific bombing, when Sarek brings her back to life. We explore how that event really cemented the relationship between this little human child and this Vulcan ambassador.

Star Trek: Discovery streams Sundays at 8:30 p.m. on CBS All Access.

Star Trek: Discovery

#Discovery #Explained #Michelle #Premiere #Star #Trek #Yeoh

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right--fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain--even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It's hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

The real Not Safe For Tumblr: despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued--and less visibly disabled--person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery--Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?