S02.E04: An Obol for Charon

[Bort]

Quote

A mysterious sphere threatens the U.S.S. Discovery even as May, in her original form, implements a plan that puts Tilly’s life in danger. Saru and Burnham’s bond grows when Saru is forced to acknowledge a deeply unsettling Kelpien truth. Pike receives new intel on Spock from a loyal friend.

Airdate: Thursday, February 7, 2019

[starri]

I might have gotten something in my eye when Tilly and Paul were singing "Space Oddity" so she wouldn't be scared.  Those two have great friend chemistry.

[Machiabelly]

What happened in the last 5 minutes? My recording cut off.

[thuganomics85]

Had no idea that they had got Rebecca Romjin to play the Enterprise/Kirk's "Number One."  That was pretty cool, even though it reminded me once again that The Liberians isn't coming back.  Sniff!

I guess I'll give the episode credit for making me wonder if they might actually kill Saru or not.  Still a little confused over how he didn't end up dying, but I'm happy either way.  Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones really sold their scenes here.

Fun seeing Reno again and it is interesting seeing a kind of class warfare going on between Stamets and her.  I guess something things never change.

Poor Tilly is on her way to having an even rougher time!

Episode also showed just how boned Starfleet would be if the universal translator ever got taken out of commission for good!  I also noticed that when Number One ordered that burger, the replicator didn't list the calories this time.  I guess enough officers complained about feeling like it was judging them, so they took it out during the next update! 

[MissLucas]

I've read some reviews complaining that Saru's plot was just a waste of time, done on every Trek show before yadaday - but apart from showing us how strong the bond between Burnham and Saru is it opened up new story-lines for Saru and gave Burnham the motivation to finally deal with her own fears about getting proactive in the search for Spock.

I also wondered if they really would kill off Saru. I was not spoiled and it has happened before on sci-fi shows that an actor left because what getting them to look appropriately alien was taking its toll on their body (RIP P'au Zhoto Zhaan). I really liked how that Short Trek episode became relevant all of a sudden. New fearless Saru makes me a bit nervous though - something seems off. And the show is definitely laying the groundwork here for Saru struggling with Order No 1. I'm curious what really happens on Kaminar - we've never seen the Ba'ul harvesting the Kelpians. What if there are no Ba'ul at all and they are Kelpians who went through the transition Saru just lived through? And the harvest is just done to fill up their ranks? Why the hell they then invented all those weird rituals I can't tell but it would be quite a twist.

And to all those complaining that Disco never comes up with new ideas: this was the first time ever the universal translator crashed on a Starfleet ship. 

Like last week I think this episode suffered a bit from too many story-lines. I wish they would have left Not-May for another episode. It felt odd that in the end everyone on the bridge seemed relieved that Tilly was safe when we've never seen any indication before that the folks on the bridge even had any knowledge of the shenanigans going on in the spore drive lab. They were obviously busy with plenty of other things but it was a reminder of how over-stuffed with plots the episode was.

That said of course Jett Reno and Stamets were comedy gold. And Tilly starting to sing 'Space Oddity' and Stamets joining in made me actually a bit teary-eyed. Probably more so than Saru and Burnham which is a bit unfair to the actors but that's the power of music, he!

Solid episode that me made me (almost) forget that they are still stalling on the search for Spock.

[starri]

1 hour ago, MissLucas said:

And to all those complaining that Disco never comes up with new ideas: this was the first time ever the universal translator crashed on a Starfleet ship. 

That scene was such a good idea, I can't believe it took 50+ years for someone to think of it.  I also like the implication that, despite what we hear, not everyone on the bridge is speaking English.  I think I got the biggest laugh out of Bryce starting to speak in Welsh.

[xaxat]

That scene where Pike is about to order an attack on the object reminded me of The Fifth Element.

[marinw]

21 minutes ago, starri said:

That scene was such a good idea, I can't believe it took 50+ years for someone to think of it.  I also like the implication that, despite what we hear, not everyone on the bridge is speaking English.

I thought they all spoke "Universal Standard", which sounds like English to us viewers.

(Sorry for all the liking and unliking @starri. The new format takes some getting use to)

[Joimiaroxeu]

That was funny when everyone started speaking a different language. Nice point I think about English being the default language.

Reno is uninsultable. She's great.

Saru lives!

Was this supposed to be a wee callback to ST IV: The Voyage Home? With a touch of Aliens?

[Latverian Diplomat]

1 hour ago, marinw said:

I thought they all spoke "Universal Standard", which sounds like English to us viewers.

I'm still not sure that they don't. Burnham surely doesn't speak Klingon as her default language. It was pretty chaotic, but I had the impression the UT  was changing their speech into random languages as well as their consoles. 

And no offense to Saru, but 94 languages is a drop in the bucket in terms of Earth languages, let alone Federation languages. He should have been only slightly less useless than everyone else.

[Latverian Diplomat]

4 hours ago, MissLucas said:

New fearless Saru makes me a bit nervous though - something seems off. And the show is definitely laying the groundwork here for Saru struggling with Order No 1. I'm curious what really happens on Kaminar - we've never seen the Ba'ul harvesting the Kelpians. What if there are no Ba'ul at all and they are Kelpians who went through the transition Saru just lived through? And the harvest is just done to fill up their ranks? Why the hell they then invented all those weird rituals I can't tell but it would be quite a twist.

Good observation about the new Saru. 

I have the impression that what Saru is going through is a natural maturational process, becoming a true adult of the species perhaps. The fear ganglia thing, though I'm not a fan anyway, make more sense as a juvenile feature, perhaps.

Saru seems to think that the Ba'ul are real, and that the idea of what he went through ends in madness so that death (by harvest or self harm) is preferable, is the Big Lie that keeps his people down. And he is pissed. And one would have to admit that fearless Kelpians would be challenging adversaries.

[fauntleroy]

I don't recall that Burnham and Saru were particularly close prior to this, to warrant such a weepy and prolonged goodbye - which ended up being oops never mind! anyway. Compared to say Stamets and Tilly where they have taken the time to develop a connection. Saru's sense of impending death is vague (whose death?), rather like Troi's 'I sense a deep urgency' - neither is sufficiently useful without the interpretation of a nearby Mary Sue.

And the fact that his premonition was wrong in the sense that he himself is still alive, produced this new personality? And this has never happened before to a Kelpian? Presumably if he now wishes to return to Kaminar to begin the Kelpian revolution he would simply resign his Star Fleet commission then Order #1 or whatever it's called would no longer apply. Worf did a similar thing with Picard's blessing. It seems like a good direction for future stories but come to think of it am surprised the Federation let a planet whose primary species eats (ETA: is this right? What does 'harvest' mean) its other (obviously-sentient and intelligent) species become a member in the first place. Have we seen any Ba'ul in Star Fleet?

Yes universal translator fail great idea. The show needs more humor to offset the over-earnestness of the main character imo.

Edited February 9, 2019 by fauntleroy

[marinw]

1 hour ago, Latverian Diplomat said:

I'm still not sure that they don't.

It never occured to me that the UT would effect writing as well as speech. I know that sometimes the UT is an implant or an app of some sort on the communicator, not something deep in the guts of the ship's AI. It varies due to the circumstances.

As we get closer to the TOS era, the technology seems to be regressing. The spore drive and holographic communications will be phased out. And Number One isn’t here for a judgey food replicator.

Edited February 9, 2019 by marinw

[paigow]

6 hours ago, MissLucas said:

but apart from showing us how strong the bond between Burnham and Saru

This was TNG...paralyzed Worf asks Riker to finish him off...

[Latverian Diplomat]

2 minutes ago, marinw said:

It never occured to me that the UT would effect writing as well as speech. I know that sometimes the UT is an implant or an app of some sort on the communicator, not something deep in the guts of the ship's AI. It varies due to the circumstances.

As we get closer to the TOS era, the technology seems to be regressing. The spore drive and holographic communications will be phased out. And Number One isn’t here for a judgey food replicator.

The UT is basically magical, and it's there as a storytelling device, more realistic approaches to the language issue would quickly become tedious. But it's a bit too powerful to make much sense as a technology.

The consoles could just support multiple written languages, I'm not sure the UT would be needed to implement that. But it all seemed connected.

[ottoDbusdriver]

What threw me about the UT fail is that people's mouth actions matched the language that they were speaking.  
Shouldn't it have appeared more like a badly dubbed movie ?  Where what was heard by others didn't match what the speaker's mouth appeared to be saying ?

The Sphere of Plot Convenience had shades of V'Ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, wanting to do a data dump before it had completed it's mission.
And by plot convenience, the sphere just happened to track Spock's shuttle.

I was more surprised by the lack of urgency, when they kept insisting that they only had minutes before Spock's shuttle went out of range but then they just took their time doing everything.

Edited February 9, 2019 by ottoDbusdriver

[Latverian Diplomat]

21 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

What threw me about the UT fail is that people's mouth actions matched the language that they were speaking.  
Shouldn't it have appeared more like a badly dubbed movie ?  Where what was heard by others didn't match what the speaker's mouth appeared to be saying ?
 

That's true, but even when the UT is working fine and doing required translation, that's what happens. Clearly it's some sort of holographic add on. 🙂

Edited February 9, 2019 by Latverian Diplomat
fix typo

[mrspidey]

I'd read that Saru's ganglia were one of the more expensive effects on the show. 

I didn't think they would literally cut them to save money...

[cali1981]

I almost thought that Saru might be killed off but then it was, "nah. no way". Saru is a bedrock character on the show and Doug Jones portrayal of him every week is wonderful.  Still, I enjoyed that plot thread, especially since Doug and Sonequa were just so damn good in their scenes together. Sometimes, even when you know how the story ends, the real fun is seeing how it gets to that ending.  The Saru "death" story was well played.

[Clanstarling]

On 2/7/2019 at 6:40 PM, starri said:

I might have gotten something in my eye when Tilly and Paul were singing "Space Oddity" so she wouldn't be scared.  Those two have great friend chemistry.

Me too. I like them both, and add that song to the mix...dusty.

12 hours ago, MissLucas said:

I've read some reviews complaining that Saru's plot was just a waste of time, done on every Trek show before yadaday - but apart from showing us how strong the bond between Burnham and Saru is it opened up new story-lines for Saru and gave Burnham the motivation to finally deal with her own fears about getting proactive in the search for Spock.

For me it was the central emotional part of the episode - because I love Saru so much. I don't particularly care if a story's been done before - every story's been done before. It's what they  do with it that counts. I had just enough doubt that Saru would make it through to make it emotional for me. I'm a bit nervous about his character's new lack of fear and epiphany about his species, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

7 hours ago, Latverian Diplomat said:

Good observation about the new Saru. 

I have the impression that what Saru is going through is a natural maturational process, becoming a true adult of the species perhaps. The fear ganglia thing, though I'm not a fan anyway, make more sense as a juvenile feature, perhaps.

Saru seems to think that the Ba'ul are real, and that the idea of what he went through ends in madness so that death (by harvest or self harm) is preferable, is the Big Lie that keeps his people down. And he is pissed. And one would have to admit that fearless Kelpians would be challenging adversaries.

Now that's an interesting take on it.

[TV Anonymous]

On 2/7/2019 at 9:40 PM, starri said:

I might have gotten something in my eye when Tilly and Paul were singing "Space Oddity" so she wouldn't be scared.  Those two have great friend chemistry.

Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time. Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

14 hours ago, MissLucas said:

I'm curious what really happens on Kaminar - we've never seen the Ba'ul harvesting the Kelpians. What if there are no Ba'ul at all and they are Kelpians who went through the transition Saru just lived through? And the harvest is just done to fill up their ranks? Why the hell they then invented all those weird rituals I can't tell but it would be quite a twist.

Did you watch The Brightest Star? It is an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks. That episode is Saru's origin story. The Ba'ul are (supposedly) real and Kelpiens are indeed taken by an allegedly Ba'ul spaceship.

With that, based on that short episode and this, I am wondering about Saru. He comes from a relatively primitive civilization. Within relatively short time, not only that he is able to master the complex science and technology of space travel, he also manages to navigate a Starfleet career and to climb up the rank to become a Commander? In that short time?

[MissLucas]

16 minutes ago, TV Anonymous said:

Did you watch The Brightest Star? It is an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks. That episode is Saru's origin story. The Ba'ul are (supposedly) real and Kelpiens are indeed taken by an allegedly Ba'ul spaceship.

Yes, I saw it - and my point is we never saw the Ba'ul - just their tech at work. And the fact that Saru adapted so quickly to life within Starfleet is actually a good argument in favor of my theory that the Ba'ul do not exist (I should have phrased that better) or rather that they are not a different species but Kelpians who moved on technologically.

[starri]

9 hours ago, marinw said:

And Number One isn’t here for a judgey food replicator.

Would YOU want to piss her off?

1 hour ago, TV Anonymous said:

 Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time. Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

People bought Gregorian chant CDs in the late 90s.  And people on Star Trek would have been listening to relatively contemporary music all along had they actually wanted to pay to license it.

[aemom]

21 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Had no idea that they had got Rebecca Romjin to play the Enterprise/Kirk's "Number One."

19 hours ago, MissLucas said:

That said of course Jett Reno and Stamets were comedy gold. And Tilly starting to sing 'Space Oddity' and Stamets joining in made me actually a bit teary-eyed. Probably more so than Saru and Burnham which is a bit unfair to the actors but that's the power of music, he!

Solid episode that me made me (almost) forget that they are still stalling on the search for Spock.

Wow, I did not recognize Rebecca Romjin at all.

I am really enjoying Reno and her no nonsense, get shit done attitude. 

But when Stametz went to drill Tilly's head, he seemed to be less than precise about where he was aiming it, which freaked me out a little bit. 

13 hours ago, fauntleroy said:

I don't recall that Burnham and Saru were particularly close prior to this, to warrant such a weepy and prolonged goodbye - which ended up being oops never mind! anyway. Compared to say Stamets and Tilly where they have taken the time to develop a connection. 

I felt the same way. It seemed rather forced.

[Starchild]

4 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Yes, I saw it - and my point is we never saw the Ba'ul - just their tech at work. And the fact that Saru adapted so quickly to life within Starfleet is actually a good argument in favor of my theory that the Ba'ul do not exist (I should have phrased that better) or rather that they are not a different species but Kelpians who moved on technologically.

I was thinking that the Ba'ul have been oppressing the Kelpians because they fear the power of their "second" stage.

[KimberStormer]

Well I thought that was a great episode -- totally on all those Disco drugs (literally, ha) but with a very Star Trekky story.  If I were going to Modernize Trek this is basically what it would look like, I think.  Of course it's totally overstuffed and bizarrely paced and melodramatic and all over the place, but that's Discovery for you.  Sure, let's cut through Tilly's unanaesthetized head with a hand drill because technobabble, why not!  Insane, and fun.

Of course The Search for Spock is awful.  And they should have had Number One be the guest captain for the season, not Pike.  But I really enjoyed this one.

Edited February 10, 2019 by KimberStormer

[paigow]

On 2/7/2019 at 9:40 PM, starri said:

I might have gotten something in my eye when Tilly and Paul were singing "Space Oddity"

Alternate!Abrams Kirk would be singing "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys....

[fauntleroy]

What does the episode title refer to? I mean, i understand the reference but not how it applied here. Did one of the characters mention it? The old galaxy brain thingy was dying but... Did Burnham stick a quatloo in Saru's mouth?

[Clanstarling]

21 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time. Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

Maybe, considering we still listen to Bach, Handel (roughly in that era), and some decades later, Mozart. Sure, they're not exactly hummable (for the most part), but they were the popular artists of the time. So I'm willing to accept that some of our pop music will survive to the future. In particular, Space Oddity.

Is it a tad cute? Sure. But I'm okay with it, myself.

Edited February 10, 2019 by Clanstarling

[SourK]

Yay, so Michael has a new surrogate family member to disappoint. Flash forward to ten years from now, when she's at a new posting, explaining, "Saru was like a brother to me, until I betrayed his trust in a tragic manner." She's such a drama magnet.

I"m really glad they kept that random engineer woman! I love her so much. I know the plotline with Tilly was supposed to be serious, but I laughed out loud every time they cut back to engineering and the situation had just quietly escalated and become 100x crazier while nobody else knew the difference. Everyone else is like, "OMG, the sphere wants to talk to us" "OMG, we're going to lose the shuttle signal," and meanwhile in engineering they're like, "It's just the three of us against this situation. None of us are doctors and we can't ask Michael to have the doctor come and visit through the door, so let's drill a hole in someone's head! It's an emergency!" And then the alien makes them high, and Tilly disappears, and they just scream into the cocoon.

Also, that fish man who's apparently a recurring character now looks expensive.

[MSterling]

On 2/9/2019 at 6:51 PM, TV Anonymous said:

Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time.

2 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

Maybe, considering we still listen to Bach, Handel (roughly in that era), and some decades later, Mozart. So I'm willing to accept that some of our pop music will survive to the future.

In shows like this, I consider recent songs shorthand for the viewers. It's either that character likes historical music or just a placeholder for a song of the show's timeline that hasn't been created yet.

[ahisma]

3 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

Maybe, considering we still listen to Bach, Handel (roughly in that era), and some decades later, Mozart. Sure, they're not exactly hummable (for the most part), but they were the popular artists of the time. So I'm willing to accept that some of our pop music will survive to the future. In particular, Space Oddity.

Is it a tad cute? Sure. But I'm okay with it, myself.

My thoughts exactly. Someone today with a strong connection from childhood might pick Ode to Joy. Once space travel took over as the common “religion” for Earth, wouldn't the works of Bowie hold a similar place in canon that lives on? 

[xaxat]

On 2/9/2019 at 7:51 PM, TV Anonymous said:

Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time. Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

I'll give them a pass on that. First of all, Space Oddity is a great song.  But more importantly, the song of an astronaut braving the unknown totally fits the character even if it does feel  anachronistic. 

[KimberStormer]

6 hours ago, SourK said:

And then the alien makes them high, and Tilly disappears, and they just scream into the cocoon.

I LOL'd IRL.  It's disappointing to know that in the next episode or two some new people take over.  Will they tone it down?  I don't want to lose that special flavor of bananas that Discovery can be.

[tennisgurl]

Awwww Space Oddity! I sure hope that such a wonderful song makes it far into space one day. It seems like the kind of song a space traveler, especially one like Tilly, would love. She and Stamets are really great together, I admit I might have felt a Feel when they sang together.

Now we continue the Search for Spock. Pointy earned dude just keeps wandering off apparently. 

[DavidJSnyder]

18 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

Maybe, considering we still listen to Bach, Handel (roughly in that era), and some decades later, Mozart. Sure, they're not exactly hummable (for the most part), but they were the popular artists of the time. So I'm willing to accept that some of our pop music will survive to the future. In particular, Space Oddity.

Also Prince, who Jett was dreaming about playing drums for and mentioned like everyone would know who was.

[dwmarch]

On 2/9/2019 at 8:43 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

The Sphere of Plot Convenience had shades of V'Ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, wanting to do a data dump before it had completed it's mission.
And by plot convenience, the sphere just happened to track Spock's shuttle.

I have a feeling it might have been the other way around. Spock drove by it on purpose, knowing it might have some answers about the Red Angel. He couldn't get the data himself but he knew a starship could handle it. It also slowed his pursuers down. Seems logical to me.

[Kromm]

Saru's situation actually confuses the heck out of me. We get a pretty deep explanation of what he only alludes to in this episode in the Short Trek episode about him, but it just makes it even harder to interpret.

Saru's people are pre-Warp. They're being taken advantage of by a far more advanced predatory civilization.  This alone should circumvent the Prime Directive.  It doesn't make any SENSE that he can't go home, because even though he's learned advanced tech outside of his civilization, his civilization is already what it is because an outside body is interfering. True, it's not a Federation species interfering, but I'm pretty sure we've seen precedent for a pre-Warp civilization getting help from the Federation against a non-Federation enemy. Heck, everytime the Federation stopped the KIingons from ravaging some primitive planet... 

[Kromm]

4 hours ago, dwmarch said:

I have a feeling it might have been the other way around. Spock drove by it on purpose, knowing it might have some answers about the Red Angel. He couldn't get the data himself but he knew a starship could handle it. It also slowed his pursuers down. Seems logical to me.

I know this show to some degree has already shit all over what we know about Spock, but it's a real stretch to think he'd put a whole Starfleet ship in harm's way just to slow them down.   I mean even if he's even smarter than we remember him and figured out all on his own what was up with that SpaceMacGufffin, he didn't transmit anything to Discovery to let THEM know what was going on. And if they hadn't figured out what was going on?  Good chance the ship would have been destroyed if they fired on it, just by virtue of it not being able to control the explosion.  Spock is a lot of things... but not usually careless.  Even the kind of unwound Space Hippie Spock we are expecting to get here.

[Kromm]

On 2/10/2019 at 6:56 PM, SourK said:

Yay, so Michael has a new surrogate family member to disappoint. Flash forward to ten years from now, when she's at a new posting, explaining, "Saru was like a brother to me, until I betrayed his trust in a tragic manner." She's such a drama magnet.

Ah, but she already disappointed him like that early Season 1.

Quote

I"m really glad they kept that random engineer woman! I love her so much.

She annoys the crap out of me. It's like they're shooting for McCoy with her, but only getting his bad qualities. 

Also there's something intrusively contemporary, or maybe even a little contemporary minus 10-20, about how she comes off in her acting. And not in a good way. It's not like actors in these shows necessarily feel "future-y" but they at least try and blur things a tiny bit. In this case the actor is doing line readings as if she's standing on a stand up comedy stage in the mid 00's or maybe even the 90s.

[FormerMod-a1]

I just love the Stamets character.  He exudes such warmth - here with Tilly, in season 1 with Michael while in the time loop (when she told him her secret).  But he also stands up for himself with Reno and so forth.

[Linderhill]

3 hours ago, Kromm said:

She annoys the crap out of me. It's like they're shooting for McCoy with her, but only getting his bad qualities. 

Also there's something intrusively contemporary, or maybe even a little contemporary minus 10-20, about how she comes off in her acting. And not in a good way. It's not like actors in these shows necessarily feel "future-y" but they at least try and blur things a tiny bit. In this case the actor is doing line readings as if she's standing on a stand up comedy stage in the mid 00's or maybe even the 90s.

Good, I thought I was the only one that felt that way.  Why does there always have to be some obnoxious, superior character in drama these days.  McCoy at least had his charm to make him appealing.  I didn't mind Jett too much when she was stranded with her shipmates on that asteroid but then I thought she was a one off.  The patented obnoxiousness is just annoying.

Stamets was annoying way back in the first few episodes but he's mellowed since he made himself a living navigation system. 

Edited February 12, 2019 by Linderhill

[Sandman]

On February 9, 2019 at 7:51 PM, TV Anonymous said:

Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

I am all about the Handel, baby! (Heh. In other words, good point by you.)

I didn't recognize Romijn as Number One, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of her. I didn't even mind the V'ger parallels, since I feared from the episode title we would somehow be visiting Frank Gorshin's Planet of Greasepaint Anvils...

Burnham's and Saru's closeness may be unearned -- I can't say for sure, since I haven't seen all of the first season -- but that doesn't mean Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones didn't sell the hell out of those scenes.

Edited February 13, 2019 by Sandman
Thought I should include his last name, too.

[paigow]

5 hours ago, Sandman said:

 since I feared from the episode title we would somehow be visiting Frank Gorshin's Planet of Greasepaint Anvils...

Like the SOUTHERN part of the galaxy....

[Lebanna]

Well, of course Space Odity is probably one of the classics that we keep hearing about. You know, like how they supposedly have Jacqueline Susann as required reading (Voyage Home).

I mean, we still read Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, but previous to our era music has not been published as a performance, only as sheet music that the majority could neither read nor perform. Therefore, it was not normal until relatively recently to hum Handel while working on a construction site, or whatever.

If we had had Handel’s music freely available on CD from the beginning, as Robinson Crusoe was available in book form to everyone who could read, we would probably have built more of a tradition of referencing it constantly and it would have become more of an indelible part of popular culture. 

TL;DR - Going forward, with freely available music, our relationship with music will be different from that of our predecessors.

And also, just to undermine my own point, as a kid my favorite song was Greensleeves, cerca around 1580. So.

[statsgirl]

On 2/9/2019 at 7:51 PM, TV Anonymous said:

Just like in The Orville, I also need to ask why Tilly's favorite song is something from 300 years before her time. Would we sing or hum a song from 1719?

If I could sing the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute without sounding like a dying vacuum cleaner, I'd show you.

On 2/10/2019 at 6:56 PM, SourK said:

Yay, so Michael has a new surrogate family member to disappoint. Flash forward to ten years from now, when she's at a new posting, explaining, "Saru was like a brother to me, until I betrayed his trust in a tragic manner." She's such a drama magnet.

That arc took up a major portion of season 1, that Michael had been very close to Saru but after she committed treason, Saru no longer trusted her and refused to do anything for her but what he was ordered to. It took most of the season for them to even start getting close again.

Michael hasn't really got people on Discovery that she's friends with. Tilly is the closest because they share quarters. But Michael isn't someone who makes friends easily.

I can see that for Michael, who lost her birth family at a young age and her foster brother Spock shortly after (the explanation for that better be a good one), losing someone she was as close to as Saru was very difficult.

[marinw]

So does the UT preserve accents? In TOS Scotty and Chekov spoke with accents. 

I'm overthinking this.

[Lebanna]

2 hours ago, marinw said:

So does the UT preserve accents? In TOS Scotty and Chekov spoke with accents. 

I'm overthinking this.

Well, presumably you could argue that Scotty and Chekov were both speaking the same version of Standard (English) as Kirk or McCoy. Which makes sense in the case of Scotty, and I guess doesn’t really in the case of Chekov - except that he would probably have argued that the Russians invented English anyway, along with everything else good in the universe. 

[LittleIggy]

Glad to see there are still burgers and fries and chewing gum in the future! 😆

I was bawling over Saru. I love him! Doug Jones is just amazing.

[Sandman]

I have to say I'm not really enjoying the Jett character all that much. I don't really know that much about Tig Notaro; I gather she's a comedian. I find there's something a little stilted about her delivery that says "Acting's Not My Day Job, I'm All Up In Ur Cameo, Baby!"

But I made an honest mistake -- I went looking for reviews of the ep online, and came across a vein of such venomous acrimony and all-out stupidity that I was actually shocked. (It was on Youtube; please don't ask me to look for it again.)

Everything about the show was wrong; there too many women, Notaro was scorned for being gay/bi and not being able to act (those faults are apparently synonymous); "the only white guy is a homo!", no one was exercising any authority because there were non-white people (again, this amounted to the same thing); i.e., Star Trek was being ruined because the future is "full of SJWs," etc. I am quite certain that these same people would have been the ones calling up NBC in 1968 bitching about miscegenation and the ruin of the show, their children's eyeballs, network television and civilization as we knew it.

I've complained as much as anyone about the plotholes and general weirdness-for-weirdness'-sake of the show, I know; now I kind of want it to thrive just to drive those sonzabitches crazy. I mean, good Lord.

In other news: Tilly is the whipping post/plaything of a cruel and irresponsible universe, yes?

Edited February 18, 2019 by Sandman