S01.E07: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

[Absurda]

I finally broke down and got a CBS All Access subscription so I'm very late to the party.  Just wanted to chime in and add:

Loved Stamets teaching Michael how to dance and the party.  I love seeing ST characters interacting in their off time and seeing the day to day stuff intermixed with the major crises.  Totally loved Lorca's "seriously, I don't care about the whale you're geeking out about.  Just do what you want about it" attitude. 

For Sisko, given how so many of his first contacts were with aliens who ended up being huge PITAs for him (the Prophets, Jem H'adar, Dominion) I imagine by the end his reaction to a new species would be along the lines of "oh, what fresh hell is this?" 

[Tachi Rocinante]

Nice to see a timeloop episode where it wasn't the same scenes over and over with a bit more figured out. (I thought for sure the "running into Stamets and knocking stuff over" bit would be replayed ad nauseam.)

Still interested and will continue to watch on broadcast.

[rmontro]

On 11/22/2020 at 10:56 AM, Tachi Rocinante said:

Still interested and will continue to watch on broadcast.

Looks like it's you and me.  Judging from the ratings, we may be the only two people watching it.  But I think this is a surprisingly good show so far.  Maybe things go seriously downhill from here, but so far so good.

I thought they made Lorca look pretty ineffectual.  Maybe it's intentional, I don't know.  But he seemed largely a bystander in this episode, when he wasn't being murdered.  It's interesting that Mudd didn't kill him again when they were out of the time loop.  He knew he would be a hunted man if he killed a starship captain, and his character is not necessarily a hardened killer.

I do like Mudd in this series, and the way Rainn Wilson plays him.  He does seem slightly more dangerous in this incarnation than in the original.

I was expecting Stamets was going to inject Michael with the tardigrade DNA so she could follow along with the time loop, but that didn't transpire.

Edited November 24, 2020 by rmontro

[ketose]

On 10/30/2017 at 12:48 PM, paigow said:

Lorca => Killer Whale....

If Ash is a Klingon, then he is the worst operative....Mudd is going to sell the Discovery to the Klingons and end the war.... and he kills the deal.....

To be fair, if Ash is one of the Klingon pariahs, Mudd selling the ship to an enemy group of Klingon's wouldn't be part of "the plan."

 

On 10/30/2017 at 3:27 PM, DarkRaichu said:

That was the most nonsensical to me especially because in 1 time loop, as soon as Saru failed to take back control using his 1st Officer panel, Lorca immediately tried to override via his captain chair console.  Meaning captain chair had higher access level  than 1st officer's panel, which it should.  Either that, or they are splitting hair between the comm button vs the other buttons on captain's chair :P

Other than that, this was a pretty amusing episode ;)

This might make sense if you think of the Captain's chair as a bluetooth device. It has all these buttons and controls, but the captain's voice is the the only part with any authority. So, you reprogram what all the buttons on the chair do and the way commands go back and forth, the "chair" is non-critical but if you believe the chair is working correctly, you can get messed up.

 

Other thoughts:

Maybe all history of the Bee Gees is lost and they think Wyclef invented the song.

Mary Sue is a little bit of an outdated concept as it came from a ST fanfic no one read. So, I use the example of Poochie. Everyone knew who Poochie was and talked about him in every scene, but he didn't do all that much. So far, Burnham has been the key to every important part of the Klingon War and is in almost every scene. In fact, Stamets had much less screen time than Burnham, and didn't really appear in any scenes without her.

Tilly doesn't really make sense as a character as some of her traits are contradictory.

 

[Paloma]

On 10/30/2017 at 3:55 AM, KimberStormer said:

Stamets and Hugh's first meeting story! 

Coming to this very late, since we only recently got Paramount+, but this was one of my favorite moments since I am such a huge fan of Rent. I didn't see anyone else here mention it (and apologies if I missed it), but the story involved the opera La Boheme--which, of course, is what Rent was loosely based on. And Anthony Rapp (Stamets) sang "La Vie Boheme" in the show. So it was kind of a double inside joke.