S02.E12: Through the Valley of Shadows

[Bort]

Quote

A fourth signal leads the U.S.S. Discovery to an insular world, where Pike is forced to make a life-changing choice. Burnham and Spock investigate a Section 31 ship gone rogue, leading to a discovery with catastrophic consequences.

Airdate: Thursday, April 4, 2019

[marinw]

Piiiiikkkkeee!!!!  I know that was coming, but it was still rough to see. Anson Mount was great in this episode. Better look over your DNR directive, Chris. Not that it would help because your timeline is sealed. Or something.

Edited April 5, 2019 by marinw

[starri]

I really enjoyed the episode.  First, it's been a treat to see Reno every time, and an added bonus to see her acting as relationship counselor to Paul and Hugh.  Also, the scene of everyone sitting around the mess hall laughing and joking was great.

I wonder if the Time Crystal caused a predestination paradox for Pike.  Now that he knows what the future is, it's unavoidable.  But if he hadn't gone to Boreth, maybe it would be?  I don't know, I hate temporal mechanics.

I found the scene where Pike told L'Rell and Ash about their son rather moving.  The scene where L'Rell told Ash that she knew Voq was gone and that he loved Michael was good too.

[DrScottie]

1 hour ago, marinw said:

Piiiiikkkkeee!!!!  I know that was coming, but it was still rough to see. Anson Mount was great in this episode. Better look over your DNR directive, Chris. Not that it would help because your timeline is sealed. Or something.

I'm presuming the time crystal was a way to avoid retconning "The Menagerie." At least he's got Vina waiting back on Talos IV for him. 

[ottoDbusdriver]

I'm a little confused by the 7 signals -- if 7 signals were detected back at the start of the season, they already know where they appeared.  So why are they finding new ones ?  Or waiting for new ones to show up ?  They should be investigating the other known locations.

Of course Boreth is home to time crystals.  But in the S1 episode with Harry Mudd, I thought time crystals were crazy rare, but here we have caves full of them.

And L'rell/Voq's son is now 40 years old due to the timey-wimey nature of the crystals, and is wise in the nature of time.  Sure, why not ?

Where the hell is the vaporize setting on the phasers ?  This is the umpteenth time that setting would come in handy, but no, Michael gets to pump dozens of shots into Faux!Gant.

I find it kind of curious that none of the other Section 31 ships showed up while Spock/Michael were searching it for info.  I guessed that Gant was Control when found only 1 person alive.  They know that Control can take over people.  Why did it take them so long to figure it out ?  FFS !

About the Section 31 ships gathering around Discovery, why not use the spore drive ?  There's no need to abandon ship.  None of the Section 31 ships has a spore drive, and we know that Discovery has already made 1 trip this season that would have required 150 years of travel at maximum warp for normal ships.

[thuganomics85]

So, by taking that time crystal, it seems like Pike has doomed himself to the eventual future he saw in the visions/his canonical ending in the original series.  Definitely not surprised he'd still accepted it, because he is totally someone who would sacrifice himself to save the galaxy, but I do wonder how this will effect him going forward.  Will he try to change it?  Or will any actual attempts to actually change is future actually just lead to it?  Because that is certainly a popular sci-fi staple.

Meanwhile, it looks like Control can pretty much takeover anyone (or make a copy of them), and is gunning for Michael now.

Still find the Klingons dull, even though I like L'Rell.

Cool seeing Reno again, but I hope she will do more than just try and get Stamets and Culber to work it out again.

With respect to the cliffhanger, this is called Star Trek: Discovery, so I'm kind of doubting they're actually going to blow up, well, Discovery.

[dwmarch]

Tyler and L'Rell, please stop butchering Kahless' name! I know I have a bat'leth around here somewhere, don't make me go it!

I loved the new look of the D7. Why the Klingons call it D7 is a mystery to me but I'll blame an overly aggressive universal translator (since we've already seen overly aggressive food synthesizers that will dispense nutritional advice along with your lunch) for not giving us the actual class name of K'Tinga. Or maybe the K'Tinga is a later model, who knows? But I was sure D7 was a Federation designation for Klingon ships.

Good news: the Federation has a medical device that instantly cures hangnails! Bad news: it's super-intense and kind of painful if you aren't precise with it, sort of like Section 31's dual-action eyball scanner and poker.

Why was Pike's face actively melty well after the accident?

When Control was revealing itself, it said something about being able to cross the room and break specific bones in some short amount of seconds. But when it changes into nano-swarm format it moves way slower, even though it takes on serpentine properties that should allow it to propel itself way faster. The phaser blasts won't kill it but can slow it down enough so it can be trapped. Accomplishing this also takes about fifty shots.

[KimberStormer]

How many times am I gonna say "WTF am I watching" on this show?  Here we are at Klingon Hogwarts, presided over by Klingon Elrond.  Excruciating. 

[paigow]

I missed the part where somebody explained why all these Klingons have blue skin......

[paigow]

When is Skynet / Thanos supposed to exterminate all sentient life? If Pike cannot change his fate, why does that matter? Will his accident save the galaxy?

[ottoDbusdriver]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

I missed the part where somebody explained why all these Klingons have blue skin......

The Klingons are looking more and more like Andorrians with every episode, maybe it's a side effect of the time crystals.

2 minutes ago, paigow said:

When is Skynet / Thanos supposed to exterminate all sentient life? If Pike cannot change his fate, why does that matter? Will his accident save the galaxy?

Pike's time crystal-infused fate kind of makes it seem like it is inevitable that Control will get the sphere data and the future can not be changed. 
So the writers need to pick a lane with respect to time travel being able to change the future .... or not.

[cambridgeguy]

3 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

So, by taking that time crystal, it seems like Pike has doomed himself to the eventual future he saw in the visions/his canonical ending in the original series.  Definitely not surprised he'd still accepted it, because he is totally someone who would sacrifice himself to save the galaxy, but I do wonder how this will effect him going forward.  Will he try to change it?  Or will any actual attempts to actually change is future actually just lead to it?  Because that is certainly a popular sci-fi staple.

It's a typical hero choice but since he saw the room where the accident will happen wouldn't he know how to avoid it?  It would have been better if he had just seen himself in the wheelchair - since he'd have no idea about when and where it happened he would have no real way of knowing how to stop it.

[Kelda Feegle]

He's meeeltiiiiiing. NFI why.

Why does no one shoot for the head, only torso??

Reno needed more screentime.

Pretty blue klingelf.

[marinw]

I am so confused about the late Airam: She got a robot body which allowed her to work, talk and move around, and poor Pike gets a beeping chair? Ten yers in the Future? 

[paigow]

1 hour ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

The Klingons are looking more and more like Andorrians with every episode, maybe it's a side effect of the time crystals.

Pike's time crystal-infused fate kind of makes it seem like it is inevitable that Control will get the sphere data and the future can not be changed. 
So the writers need to pick a lane with respect to time travel being able to change the future .... or not.

Has anybody called the living Dr. Daystrom for tech support???? Or is this Control a Daystrom version of Ultron running amok????

[paigow]

2 hours ago, lora said:

Wasn't Ash badly injured in the last episode, or do Klingons have super-healing powers?

Culber used the magic mushroom extract that added 10 pounds of muscle to his own dead body....

[Babsbaeck]

5 hours ago, marinw said:

I am so confused about the late Airam: She got a robot body which allowed her to work, talk and move around, and poor Pike gets a beeping chair? Ten yers in the Future? 

I keep thinking that each time they've messed with Control (or have tried to stop it), they've moved closer to the original timeline/series. So things are changing gradually, little by little. Didn't their communicators change to the ones we see in the original series a few episodes back? So maybe the time crystal thing-y re-sets things to the way they are meant to be? Maybe the re-set means that things aren't quite as advanced as they are in the current Discovery time-line. 

Any time travel thing in any tv show/movie/book gives me headaches (we will not discuss the time travel in Stargate SG-1 that screwed up my brain)! Mostly I just have to go along for the ride and just pretend I have some idea of what's going on or accept what the writers want to play with.

[KimberStormer]

Speaking of time travel, at the beginning they were like "Well, Dr. Burnham's suit is broken so we won't be seeing her again!"  Dude, what are you even talking about.  She's time travelling from the future.  She could have already been to your future hundreds of times. 

[Quark]

I feel so awful for Pike. The poor guy. Feel free to put this in spoiler tags for anyone that knows (if necessary), but overall does he get a happy ending?

[Meginsanity]

16 hours ago, starri said:

I wonder if the Time Crystal caused a predestination paradox for Pike.  Now that he knows what the future is, it's unavoidable.  But if he hadn't gone to Boreth, maybe it would be?  I don't know, I hate temporal mechanics.

I think that's what the Tenavik was saying. When he saw the vision in the crystal, it was one possible future, but by taking the crystal he was committing himself to that future.

13 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Of course Boreth is home to time crystals.  But in the S1 episode with Harry Mudd, I thought time crystals were crazy rare, but here we have caves full of them.

And L'rell/Voq's son is now 40 years old due to the timey-wimey nature of the crystals, and is wise in the nature of time.  Sure, why not ?

They still are crazy rare, I don't imagine most people want to travel to a Klingon monastery and commit themselves to whatever future the crystals promise just to get one.

The timey-wimey thing made me laugh when the tree was growing. "Um, guys? There's trees in the hallway again..."

I wonder if Pike aged at all, even a little bit, at the monastery. Was his hair grayer at the end of the episode? It kind of seemed like it.

6 hours ago, marinw said:

I am so confused about the late Airam: She got a robot body which allowed her to work, talk and move around, and poor Pike gets a beeping chair? Ten yers in the Future? 

Perhaps what happened to Airiam, being taken over, leads to avoidance of that kind of technology when it comes time for Pike to need medical assistance.

1 hour ago, KimberStormer said:

Speaking of time travel, at the beginning they were like "Well, Dr. Burnham's suit is broken so we won't be seeing her again!"  Dude, what are you even talking about.  She's time travelling from the future.  She could have already been to your future hundreds of times. 

That bugged me so much! For all they know, she's already come back and saved Michael again (and again, and again) before they even meet her. She could have sat with Michael on her deathbed as she dies of old age for crying out loud.

[MissLucas]

1 hour ago, KimberStormer said:

Speaking of time travel, at the beginning they were like "Well, Dr. Burnham's suit is broken so we won't be seeing her again!"  Dude, what are you even talking about.  She's time travelling from the future.  She could have already been to your future hundreds of times. 

Yeah, well - apparently they've never seen a diagram of River Song's timeline!

Well, that was a first: I enjoyed almost all Klingon scenes. And I'm so glad we managed to escape a ton of 'I need to save my son' tropes thanks to timey-wimey crystals at Klingon Hogwarts!

The episode belonged to Pike though - poor guy!

Who will be the next person to volunteer as marriage counselor to Stamets and Culber? Is this going to be a running gag now? Can't wait for Tilly's turn - she'll babble then into reconciliation in no time!

Best thing about this episode: Me being smarter than Burnham and Spock. You've got 15 seconds* in case the hull breaches and space vacuum is coming for you. If Gant was working on a console it was unlikely that he alone of all the crew was near enough to get into a space suit. Ergo: dude's another Control puppet.

Also: for an all-knowing AI Control is really bad at adapting its speech pattern. Second time now that it got caught by a linguistic lapse .

*Learned this just yesterday while reading the latest Expanse novel, didn't even bother to fact check because I trust these guys 😉

[marinw]

25 minutes ago, Meginsanity said:

Perhaps what happened to Airiam, being taken over, leads to avoidance of that kind of technology when it comes time for Pike to need medical assistance.

Future Spock will resort to good old-fashioned Kidnapping! The technology retconning is the most headachey thing about prequels. Technology can ebb and flow and regress, but in the Trek verse the technology grows more, not less advanced between the 23rd and 24th centeries. 

Edited April 5, 2019 by marinw

[Toaster Strudel]

The script writing room for this show must be one of the country's greatest concentration of narcissists. The character of Micheal Burnham is a channel for the script writers to funnel all their self-love and grandiose views of themselves.

Of course Ash has only loved, and can only love Michael Burnham.

Of course the AI Control is deep into Michael Burnham's mommy issues.

Of course, solutions to all problems are found by Michael Burnham.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Toaster Strudel

[DrScottie]

6 hours ago, Quark said:

I feel so awful for Pike. The poor guy. Feel free to put this in spoiler tags for anyone that knows (if necessary), but overall does he get a happy ending?

Spoiler alert from 1966? 

I'm not sure it's technically a spoiler as it's already part of the original series unless Discovery changes it.  

The irradiated and wheelchair bound Christopher Pike ends up back on Talos IV with Vina and the Talosians if the events of the TOS "The Menagerie" episodes still happen. 

Due to their power of illusion, he can walk again and his looks are restored much like Vina's. So, yes he does. Watch the old episodes to find out what Spock has to do to get him back there as travel to Talos IV is banned and punishable by death by the time Kirk is in command of the Enterprise. 

Edited April 6, 2019 by DrScottie

[SourK]

I've lost the thread of what's happening with these signals. However, one thing I hadn't thought about that I found interesting was the suggestion that whoever's sending the signals wanted Saru to change for some reason and, if the person sending the signals is an enemy, it might be a bad reason.

Relatedly, if anyone wants to re-explain what's happening with the signals, that would be wonderful. :)

On 4/4/2019 at 10:13 PM, starri said:

I really enjoyed the episode.  First, it's been a treat to see Reno every time, and an added bonus to see her acting as relationship counselor to Paul and Hugh.  Also, the scene of everyone sitting around the mess hall laughing and joking was great.

I like Reno, too, but I don't understand why every single person on this ship wants them back together, still. And I'm starting to feel a little bullied on behalf of Hugh. If he wants to break up with Paul, he's allowed to do that. It doesn't matter if it makes things sad and uncomfortable.

On 4/5/2019 at 12:33 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

And L'rell/Voq's son is now 40 years old due to the timey-wimey nature of the crystals, and is wise in the nature of time.  Sure, why not ?

I laughed out loud when Pike said it was too hard to explain how he met their son. The explanation is literally, "He's a time wizard, now, and I met him from thirty years in the future." I also laughed because: imagine if you could dump your kid somewhere and have them instantly turn into an adult who's processed his feelings about you and decided to remember you fondly.

[Lilly77]

The fact they didn't immediately suspect Gant was the silliest part of this episode.  It was so obvious!  They make wild leaps of logic that are invariably right, but they miss this?

The Stamets/Culber thing could be great, but they are handling it in a series of weird isolated interludes that never seem to come together into the audience seeing these characters are destined for each other or the relationship is worth saving.  At present, it seems that Culber had a lucky escape from being alternately ignored and micromanaged by Stamets, which I don't think is the impression they wanted to give us!  I agree with MissLucas, they'll stay estranged until Tilly babbles them into reconciliation with virtually no discussion or contact between the characters themselves prior to the reconciliation.  Unless Michael 'heals' them with the power of her Michaelness.

I loved the first two Tig Notaro appearances, but this one was a bust.  I just want to see her arguing with Stamets and Tilly over their work.  

Anson Mount is fantastic.  I'm going to have to go back and watch his past work now (I've seen him in Inhumans, but that doesn't count, no actor got out of that trainwreck looking good).  I also like Ethan Peck and his deep voice and gravitas.  Like others, I'm wishing for a Pike's Enterprise spinoff instead.

I also wondered why the Klingons are blue.  They aren't even trying for the slightest bit of continuity there.

[FormerMod-a1]

Maybe they'll keep changing how the Klingons look every time we see them until they match either the TNG or TOS Klingon look.  And they'll think since it was a minor change each time that we won't notice the whole progression. 😄 😅 😆

[ottoDbusdriver]

5 minutes ago, aquarian1 said:

Maybe they'll keep changing how the Klingons look every time we see them until they match either the TNG or TOS Klingon look.  And they'll think since it was a minor change each time that we won't notice the whole progression. 😄 😅 😆

That would be fun -- maybe they'll work their way through all the colors of the spectrum.  :)

To quote from the DS9 Season 5 episode 'Trials and Tribble-lations':

Odo: "Mr. Worf ?"
Worf: "They are Klingons. And it is a long story."
Chief O'Brien: "What happened ? Some kind of genetic engineering ?"
Dr. Bashir: "A viral mutation ?"
Worf: "We do not discuss it with outsiders."

So the Klingons better get to changing pronto in order to match up to the look of the TOS Klingons within the next 10 years.

[paigow]

On 4/5/2019 at 6:22 AM, cambridgeguy said:

It's a typical hero choice but since he saw the room where the accident will happen wouldn't he know how to avoid it? 

He would not let all those cadets die to save himself.... 

[Clanstarling]

On 4/4/2019 at 9:33 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm a little confused by the 7 signals -- if 7 signals were detected back at the start of the season, they already know where they appeared.  So why are they finding new ones ?  Or waiting for new ones to show up ?  They should be investigating the other known locations.

...

About the Section 31 ships gathering around Discovery, why not use the spore drive ?  There's no need to abandon ship.  None of the Section 31 ships has a spore drive, and we know that Discovery has already made 1 trip this season that would have required 150 years of travel at maximum warp for normal ships.

I was a little confused by the signal discussion too.

I suspect the spore drive will be a player.

On 4/5/2019 at 4:21 AM, Kelda Feegle said:

Why does no one shoot for the head, only torso??

Torsos are easier targets - heads bob and weave. That being said, she was pretty close and probably could have made it - but I don't think it would have made any difference.

19 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Yeah, well - apparently they've never seen a diagram of River Song's timeline!

...

Also: for an all-knowing AI Control is really bad at adapting its speech pattern. Second time now that it got caught by a linguistic lapse .

*Learned this just yesterday while reading the latest Expanse novel, didn't even bother to fact check because I trust these guys 😉

Beat me to it - I thought of River Song immediately. Spoilers!

Speaking of spoilers, I'm lagging on the Expanse books because I don't want to get ahead of the next season. Looking forward to it!

5 hours ago, SourK said:

I've lost the thread of what's happening with these signals. However, one thing I hadn't thought about that I found interesting was the suggestion that whoever's sending the signals wanted Saru to change for some reason and, if the person sending the signals is an enemy, it might be a bad reason.

I went the other way with that interesting comment - I thought maybe it was someone who's an ally and is setting things in motion and needs Saru to make sure Burnam goes to the section 31 ship.

So here's my theory - Burnam's mother didn't know anything about the signals when she was asked, not because she had nothing to do with them. But because she hadn't sent them yet. Maybe she got the idea from being asked about them (in a timey-wimey time loop weirdness way). I think there were times the Red Angel appeared that had nothing to do with the signals - and everything to do with Burnam. So maybe this is the same thing, just a different method now that she no longer has the suit.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Clanstarling

[TV Anonymous]

Well, I am disappointed with the time crystal. I always thought that Star Trek is a science fiction and whatever they do can be explained away by pseudo-science. Because of that, I was under the impression that whenever they do temporal movement in all series of Star Trek, it is because technology in the future allows people to manipulate space and time, in relation to relativistic physics. And now it turns out that it is because of this magical object, with no explanation.

5 hours ago, Lilly77 said:

Anson Mount is fantastic.  I'm going to have to go back and watch his past work now (I've seen him in Inhumans, but that doesn't count, no actor got out of that trainwreck looking good).  I also like Ethan Peck and his deep voice and gravitas.  Like others, I'm wishing for a Pike's Enterprise spinoff instead.

Watch all 5 seasons of Hell on Wheels. It was one of my favorite shows.

[Joimiaroxeu]

"I hatched ready."

Reno drily delivering those truth bombs. She's great.

After the first episode of this season I asked this:

Quote

So at what point does Pike end up just a head on top of a built-up roomba? 😉

I guess the answer was, "Episode 12." Bravo, producers. Nicely done.

[marinw]

If I were Pike I would find the best lawyer in the Federation and have that person file an iron-clad living will. Pike is ok with sacrificing himself to save those cadets, it's the aftermath that horrifies him. Son Of Voq can say that his fate was "sealed" when Pike took the time crystal or some such sh*t, but Chris can still try.

Like other posters here, I am somehow offended by the idea of Time Cystals. This is Science Fiction, not Fantasy.

Edited April 6, 2019 by marinw

[starri]

44 minutes ago, marinw said:

Like other posters here, I am somehow offended by the idea of Time Cystals. This is Science Fiction, not Fantasy.

But we've seen magic-like things before.  The Orbs on DS9, for one.

[Quark]

19 hours ago, DrScottie said:

Spoiler alert from 1966? 

I'm not sure it's technically a spoiler as it's already part of the original series unless Discovery changes it.  

The irradiated and wheelchair bound Christopher Pike ends up back on Talos IV with Vina and the Talosians if the events of the TOS "The Menagerie" episodes still happen. 

Due to their power of illusion, he can walk again and his looks are restored much like Vina's. So, yes he does. Watch the old episodes to find out what Spock has to do to get him back there as travel to Talos IV is banned and punishable by death by the time Kirk is in command of the Enterprise. 

Thanks!

[cambridgeguy]

8 hours ago, paigow said:

He would not let all those cadets die to save himself.... 

Of course not, but he could try to cancel the training exercise on a crappy old ship.  If he recognizes that cadet he was trying to help then maybe he can reiterate that when a superior officer tells you to leave, you don't ignore them and try to save the day.  You only get to do that once you've graduated from the Academy unless your name is Jim Kirk.

At the very least, I'm stunned he didn't come up with a statement saying that he'd prefer death to being a complete invalid.  That's a fate worse than death, in my opinion.

Edited April 6, 2019 by cambridgeguy

[macrone]

4 hours ago, starri said:

But we've seen magic-like things before.  The Orbs on DS9, for one.

Or the time portal in "The City on the Edge of Forever."

[ottoDbusdriver]

Though I am rather curious that Worf never mentioned anything about time crystals when he spent some quality time on Boreth on TNG (the episode where the clone of Kahless 'magically' appeared).

[Miles]

I'm not going to make a list of all the dumb like last episode. I'd be here forever. But:

Seriously they couldn't figure out that dude Micheal knew from the pilot was infected by control? They know control can do that. I figured it out in under one second. Speaking of control, in the "previously on" they repeated the "struggle is pointless" line. Now thewriters are just hitting us over the head with this being either a new origin of the Borg or their own discount version. "Resistance is futile" is still the better line though.

Now to the end of the episode. Destroying the ship? Yeah, great plan, Micheal.  These dumbasses have the spore drive and Tig Notaro mentioned this episode that it works again. With that thing they can jump to the other end of the galaxy in under 10 seconds. Literally. Control would take hundrets of years at maimum warp to follow them there. Out thher they would have all the time in the world to powwer the time crystal.

[Miles]

On 4/5/2019 at 6:40 PM, Babsbaeck said:

I keep thinking that each time they've messed with Control (or have tried to stop it), they've moved closer to the original timeline/series. So things are changing gradually, little by little. Didn't their communicators change to the ones we see in the original series a few episodes back? So maybe the time crystal thing-y re-sets things to the way they are meant to be? Maybe the re-set means that things aren't quite as advanced as they are in the current Discovery time-line. 

Section 31 had the next gen communicators. Implying that they have technology that is ahead of the federation. That isn't that far fetched. A lot of things the NSA was doing, that were revealed by the snowden paper were thought to be not yet possible at the time. I remember experts saying at the time that they were about ten years ahead of the general public. Just goes to showw you what a secret agency can do if you dump nearly infinite money on them.

On 4/5/2019 at 8:32 PM, MissLucas said:

Yeah, well - apparently they've never seen a diagram of River Song's timeline!

DW should be required watching in Star Fleet academy. Star fleet officers get mixed up in time travel about once a week it seems. It would behove them to actually learn about it.

5 hours ago, macrone said:

Or the time portal in "The City on the Edge of Forever."

I mean, that could have been just really advanced technology.

[paigow]

2 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Though I am rather curious that Worf never mentioned anything about time crystals when he spent some quality time on Boreth on TNG (the episode where the clone of Kahless 'magically' appeared).

Klingons are notoriously bad managers of natural resources... case in point: Praxis

[Clanstarling]

4 hours ago, eliot90000 said:

Not only a sci fi staple.  It’s also the plot of Oedipus, written thousands of years ago.  

The mother of all plots, as it were. 😉

[aemom]

I'm really kind of sad. This show could be so awesome, but they are doing stupid things that make no sense.

First of all, Anson Mount is killing it as Pike. We all know how things end for him, so I will be really sad to see him go.

Almost every episode focuses on Michael. I get that she is the main character, but other Star Treks had episodes on other characters. I want to learn more about the bridge crew!

I am eminently grateful that we were spared Michael's tears this week, though we came close a couple of times.

I am also so bothered by these time crystals. I recall many ST episodes of the past where they had to slingshot around a star for time travel, and now they have these time crystals? Does this planet have any sort of defense system? What stops anyone from showing up and taking crystals by force?

*sigh*

Edited April 7, 2019 by aemom
Forgot something

[marinw]

I find myself slowly  warming to the Ethan Peck Hipster Spock. The late Leonard Nimoy could be quite snarky back in the TOS era, particularly in his interactions with McCoy.

Although I still care more about Pike than any other character. 

[ottoDbusdriver]

Where the hell is the Temporal Integrity Commission in all of this ?   Shouldn't the USS Relativity be monitoring all these incursions by the Red Angel and the AI that is trying to change the timeline by co-opting Control to get the sphere data in order to eliminate all sentient life in the universe in the future ?  Because I would think that would be something they might consider investigating.

[aemom]

4 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Where the hell is the Temporal Integrity Commission in all of this ?   Shouldn't the USS Relativity be monitoring all these incursions by the Red Angel and the AI that is trying to change the timeline by co-opting Control to get the sphere data in order to eliminate all sentient life in the universe in the future ?  Because I would think that would be something they might consider investigating.

Yes!  I thought about that too, and forgot to mention that in my post.  You're right.

[paigow]

4 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Where the hell is the Temporal Integrity Commission in all of this ?  

Red Angel: Spock, many years from now, you will encounter the S.S. Botany Bay... No matter what your captain says, accidentally fire a full spread of photon torpedoes at it.... 

Temporal Integrity Minion: Sir, I have detected a temporal incursion that will wipe out a series of 20th century movies....

[paigow]

On 4/7/2019 at 11:54 AM, marinw said:

I find myself slowly  warming to the Ethan Peck Hipster Spock.

Unless the timeline gets rebooted, his Pon Farr will occur in 10-12 years....when T'Pring challenges, this Spock will likely say: "Later! 3 to beam up..."

[CaptainE]

The writers must be thinking TOS fans will squee with delight over the inclusion of Pike’s future here.  Unfortunately it’s been brought here in a clunky way.  How in the hell would the crystal keeper know that Pike is seeing a terrible future, not a pleasant one, his reaction aside, which could have been reacting to something happening to others btw. And why does the crystal choose to reveal only a  portion of his future.  Crystals are a bad idea unless they are dilithium crystals.

And how does he know that that future is unchangeable?  The crystal manual?  

Also, why does Pike keep taking the first suggestion Michael give as the best and only course of action?  Like others have said- Black alert time.

Edited April 8, 2019 by CaptainE
Prime timer is a dopey site name btw

[wmdekooning]

On 4/6/2019 at 8:58 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

So the Klingons better get to changing pronto in order to match up to the look of the TOS Klingons within the next 10 years.

My somewhat incorrect belief was that not all of the Klingons changed their appearance to look like TOS Klingons, and that those Klingons we saw in that series were akin to "sleeper cells". They were favored to engage the Federation at that time because they looked more human.

However according to the Wikipedia entry...

Quote

A canonical explanation for the change was given in a two-part storyline on Star Trek: Enterprise, in the episodes "Affliction" and "Divergence" that aired in February 2005. Attempting to replicate experiments by humans to create augmented soldiers, Klingon scientists used genetic material from human test subjects on their own people, which resulted in a viral pandemic which caused Klingons to develop human-like physical characteristics. Dr. Phlox of the Enterprise formulated a cure for the virus, but the physical alterations remained in the populace and were inherited by offspring.

Phlox indicated that "some day" the physical alterations could be reversed.[28][29] The head scientist finally mentioned he would go into cranial reconstructive surgery, another nod to 'restoration' of the ridges for some Klingons.

Edited April 9, 2019 by wmdekooning